


When It's All Mixed Up

by misqueue



Series: The Architects of Life [6]
Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Blaine Anderson/Eli C - mentioned, Canon Compliant, Depressed Mood, Discussion of Gun Violence, Drama, Erotica, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends With Benefits, Friendship, Gun Politics, Kurt Hummel/Adam Crawford - minor, M/M, Melancholy, Mild Dissociation, Mild Kink, Mood Swings, Psychological Trauma, Season/Series 04, Series Omnibus, Sweetness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:01:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 46,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2741858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misqueue/pseuds/misqueue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An omnibus of the Scenes During the Break Up series.  This is the tale of Kurt and Blaine's breaking apart and learning how to come back together, set from 4x04 "The Break Up" leading up to 5x01 "Love Love Love". Time may be an arrow, but the journey of the human heart is not so linear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. So Many Riches

**Author's Note:**

> The chapters are not in chronological order, but there's a reason for the order they're in. If you do prefer to approach them in timeline order, [please see this post on my Tumblr](http://misqueue.tumblr.com/post/74979771292/scenes-during-the-break-up-chronologically). Thank you. <3
> 
> Title from (once more) "Break it Down Again" by Tears for Fears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set between “4x21 Wonder-ful” and 4x22 “All or Nothing”. An interlude in the afterglow. It’s so easy with Blaine, except for all the ways it never will be. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #1 Artist
> 
> Title from the lyrics of Sting's "If you Love Somebody Set Them Free"

**April 2013**

The torpor of two AM, the dense silence and out-of-body shift of the small hour, creates a strange island of intimacy in Kurt's old bed. He'd told himself they weren't going to do this, not this time. But it's done now, and he can't regret anything. Not with the way Blaine smiles lazily up at him from where his head is pillowed, hot and heavy, upon Kurt's tired thigh. Not with the way Blaine's fingers drag through the cooling semen on his belly, scribing curlicues and hearts across his skin.

.

It's been an extraordinary evening: a full, joyous table for the family Friday dinner, and then they all went out for ice cream. After that, his Dad and Carole—giggling and holding hands—went their own way, off to the fanciest suite at the Red Rooster Inn, just booked on a celebratory whim. Finn returned to the dorms, and Blaine turned to Kurt in the parking lot. Standing in the pale cone of the halogen streetlight, he asked, "Are you home alone tonight?"

With a nod, Kurt swallowed and said, "I am."

Blaine tilted his head and shifted his weight and his demeanor grew solemn. "Do you want to be?" he asked, and in his steady gaze Kurt saw what Blaine offered him. Still riding the high from the doctor's good news and being reunited with his friends and Blaine, with the whole of next week yet to come, Kurt took Blaine's hand and said, "Not especially." 

Falling into bed with Blaine has become its own kind of homecoming. 

.

Kurt grunts softly and shifts up against his pillows. But beneath his back, the sheets are sweaty and stick to his skin, and Blaine's weight across his legs hinders his attempt at movement. He gives up and slumps back into uselessness. One foot is too hot, trapped in the wad of his comforter.

Blaine stirs and raises his head. Kurt's skin prickles with a chill when that contact is lost. "I hope you know," Blaine murmurs, a glint of wry humor in his eye. "This doesn't mean we're back together." The way he says it—gently mocking—makes Kurt laugh. He can't fake sternness with Blaine like this, not today. 

Above them, the ceiling light burns brightly. There's nowhere to hide even if Kurt wanted to. He doesn't. "Would you believe me if I told you I wasn't actually going to say it this time?" Kurt asks. He's no longer interested in trying to categorize or constrain their friendship. They're friends, and—apparently—they do _this_ as friends now. And this, the sex, is easy, easier in some ways than it was when they were boyfriends. 

Blaine's smile broadens. "I'm glad you've decided to stay next week."

"I'm glad you asked me to."

The gratitude settles between them comfortably, but then, the brightness of Blaine's gaze and smile dims for a moment. His lips part as if he's going to speak, to ask something else. The pause hangs between them, and Kurt just lets it hang. Lets the tension dissipate until Blaine's smile strengthens again and he lowers his mouth to Kurt's thigh. Slow kisses drift toward the sensitive inner skin. Kurt bites into his bottom lip and shivers pleasantly, opens his legs more widely. It's easy. He likes easy.

Blaine moves again, sitting up and back to kneel between Kurt's legs, his hands slide a gentle hold under Kurt's calves to cup behind his knees, lifting and spreading and making Kurt flush freshly hot as Blaine exposes the most intimate places of Kurt's body to his scrutiny. The breath of air is welcome on his skin. Upon Kurt's belly, his cock pulses and thickens; an eager warmth curls in his balls. 

"It's an art," Blaine says thoughtfully. His attention, fixed between Kurt's legs, has enough gravity it's almost tactile. "Don't you think?"

"Hmm?" Kurt asks as his breath quickens. "What's that?"

"Sex," Blaine says, lifts his gaze to Kurt's.

"You think so?" It comes out thin and high.

"With you it is," Blaine says, and the warmth in his voice stirs more than lust in Kurt's belly.

And because Kurt rarely passes over an opportunity to hear that he's special (especially from Blaine), he presses ahead with a question, "And it wasn't with—"

"No."

"—Eli?" It's not difficult to say his name, and Kurt's not accusatory. Eli is a fact of history between them, acknowledged but not contended. He says the name without rancor, so Blaine knows it's okay. But Kurt's ego still enjoys being reminded: Blaine wants him most.

More softly, with a timid smile. "No," Blaine replies. "Just you."

It's an admission too, Kurt knows, of the depth of feeling that remains between them, the ways they're still bound by time spent and touches given, laughter and tears, confessions and daydreams. Their history makes this meaningful. But the lack of any formal relationship makes this bizarrely simple. 

In retrospect, when they were boyfriends, sex felt like maybe it meant too much for Kurt, it had to mean so many things. It came with expectations and the weight of the future barreling down upon them. Every touch became a sentence, trying to promise the impossible and the unknowable. Every kiss became overburdened. Kurt's come to realize, a caress—no matter how intimate or loving—isn't a conversation, an orgasm isn't a vow, and while they can still share this, it's nice to be in a moment with Blaine, without worrying about... everything.

"Art, huh?" Kurt says. He stretches his arms and arches his back, flexes his legs in Blaine's hold. Makes himself a tempting spectacle. "So am I your canvas then? Your instrument?"

"Well," Blaine says, smoothing and lengthening the final "l" into seduction. "Your body is my medium—but really, you're my audience."

"Audience?" Kurt whispers.

"Yeah, because..." Blaine's attention drops from Kurt's face to where he's touching Kurt. He slides his hands lightly up Kurt's thighs, teasing with the hope of their convergence right where Kurt wants it most. "I know so many different ways to touch you, to kiss you. To make you feel good," Blaine says as the knuckles of his thumbs bump up against the heavy shape of Kurt's balls, and Blaine's hands still. 

"Depending on things like your mood or how tired you are," Blaine says, "there are different things you like, different ways you respond. If I can read you well, then I can make you come really fast and hard, or I can choose to draw it out. I can make you come without touching your dick at all. I can make it so you're so desperate you beg—or I can calm you down and make you float."

It's all true, desperately, irrevocably _true_ , and Kurt's heartbeat pulses urgently in his throat. "Knowing me?" he asks breathlessly. "That's the art?"

"I just think that, if art is something that appeals to our senses, then sex is the art of touch, of bringing pleasure and manipulating sensation." Blaine's hands move again to give proof, slipping over Kurt's groin and apart, his palms flattening as he strokes outward to Kurt's hips, feeding Kurt's anticipation while requesting his patience. "But, like all art, there's craft, too. You have to know what you're doing and be willing to keep learning. Practice." He flicks a smile up at Kurt. "And because your audience is just one unique person, they have to trust you with that knowledge, which makes it... precious."

After he's swallowed his heart back down to where it belongs, Kurt says quietly, "I really like that, Blaine."

Blaine doesn't say anything then, for a while. His thumbs rub small circles upon Kurt's hips, while Kurt trembles beneath him, waiting. 

But then Blaine lets go of Kurt, folds his hands together in his lap and glances away, blinking too rapidly.

"Honey?" Kurt asks, lifts up to his elbows and frowns, concerned.

"It's too much, isn't it?"

Kurt sits all the way up, reaches and wraps a hand around Blaine's wrist, feels Blaine's pulse flutter beneath his fingertips. "It's not for me, but I don't know about you. Was this a mistake today?"

Blaine shakes his head vehemently. "I wouldn't give up a second spent with you like this."

"I'm not using you," Kurt says carefully. "If that's your worry. I'm... Blaine, it's not like this for me with anyone else. I'm comfortable with you."

"What about your New York guy?" Blaine asks; he doesn't look at Kurt.

Shaking his head, Kurt smiles with sadness tinged chagrin. "Let's just say, he lacks your artistic sensibility."

Like lightning at midnight, Blaine's smile returns, blinding and sudden. "You don't think I'm weird?"

Kurt rolls his eyes with extra drama and grins. " _Of course_ I think you're weird." He tips forward and angles his head to invite a kiss. 

With a laugh, Blaine touches the line of Kurt's jaw with his fingertips. Then he bows his head and kisses Kurt, sweet, soft, and open. When he withdraws, he asks, "So are you up for an encore?"

Kurt falls back to his pillows. "Your audience awaits."


	2. Your Voice Inside Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A missing moment from 4x09 "Swan Song" After he gets home from Sectionals, Blaine calls Kurt. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #2 Belong.
> 
> Title from the lyrics to Pat Benatar's "We Belong"

**November 2012**

_"I love you, too."_ The words, a fragile treasure, nestle at the base of Blaine's throat long after he puts down the phone. Even through the performance and Marley's fainting, the chaos in the choir room, the news that they had lost to The Warblers, the words linger beneath Blaine's skin, slipping to settle warm behind his breastbone on the drive back home. He missed them.

It's late on Thanksgiving when he comes into the house through the garage, down the short hall, past the laundry room, and into the kitchen. His mother sits at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and her laptop. Her hair and makeup are still done for guests and diamond solitaires glint at her ears, but she's wearing yoga pants, slippers, and a purple velvet hoodie. She doesn't look up as he comes in. "How'd it go?" she asks.

The kitchen still smells of sage and thyme and roast turkey. Blaine's heart beats with the memory of Kurt's voice: _"I miss you like crazy."_ But his stomach growls with hunger; he pulls his bag off over his head and drops it into a vacant chair. "We, um. We were disqualified," Blaine says. "We didn't finish our set."

"Oh, what happened?" she asks, her expression falls into disappointment and her attention comes up from her screen. Then she says, "There's a plate for you in the oven, dear. The cranberry sauce is in the fridge."

Blaine gets the plate from the oven (smiles at the extra large helping of corn pudding his mother has given him) and the cranberry sauce from the refrigerator; he sits at the table opposite her, and tells her about Marley fainting, the ensuing panic, the Warbler's win. She listens with a sympathetic frown, and then, when Blaine's cleaned his plate, gets herself another cup of coffee and a slice of pie for them each. He tells her, too, that Kurt called, to wish him good luck. That makes her smile. The details of their break-up he's left vague, but she knows he's missed Kurt.

"How is he?" she asks.

"We didn't talk long, but good, I think?" It's hard to restrain his smile. _"You're still my best friend."_

In his left front trouser pocket, his phone is a too still presence, contrasting with Blaine's ache for it to buzz again with Kurt's name lighting up the screen. The weight of it is a reminder of a connection restored. 

He helps his mother unload the dishwasher, checks in with his Dad, and then goes upstairs. While he showers he leaves his phone on the vanity with the volume turned up. The phone doesn't ring. As he towels off, Blaine considers it. It's not like he expects another call or text tonight; he doesn't know what Kurt's doing with his Thanksgiving in New York. Maybe it's too soon for communication to normalize between them. But... _"I can't stand not talking to you..."_

Blaine dresses in his pajamas and dressing gown and sits cross-legged on his bed, holding his phone in his hand. He's sent so many unanswered texts, placed so many unanswered calls, left so many ignored voice messages—does he dare?

His fingers decide before his head has, tapping through to his contacts and finding Kurt's name. No breath leaves Blaine's lungs while he holds the phone to his ear and listens for the ring and waits.

On the fourth ring, he begins to despair. Kurt's phone goes to voicemail after five. He's lowering it from his ear when the fifth ring halts and he hears Kurt's voice, clipped with breathlessness. "Hi."

"Um, hi?" Blaine says. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"Oh, no. Everyone's gone now. I was just in the shower. Can you give me a second?"

"Sure, yes, of course," Blaine says.

The loud static of Kurt's breath rushes in Blaine's ear, and then muffled thumps and rustling, and he hears Kurt tell Rachel, "It's Blaine. I'll be a little while."

There are more indistinct sounds of movement and the murmur of Rachel's voice. Blaine sits quietly, doesn't fidget, and he waits. Apprehension curls in his stomach as he realizes he should have a plan for this conversation. It's too soon for all the things he wants to ask Kurt—and Kurt did say they would talk at Christmas—but it's hard to stop the yearning for answers from creeping up the base of his tongue. He tries to swallow them down. Tries to reorient himself in feelings of friendship and an appreciation for the delicacy and newness of this reconnection. Makes sure he's grateful for Kurt having answered the phone at all, grateful for Kurt's reaching back finally. He won't ask for too much, just—

"Hey!" Kurt's voice is sudden and loud in his ear. "Sorry, I just wanted to get dressed. It's too cold to air dry in my robe."

"Oh, it's fine," Blaine says. Smiles at the humor in Kurt's voice. "I wasn't sure if I should call so late. You said you had... people there?"

"Yeah," Kurt says. "It was a sort of surprise orphan's Thanksgiving with Isabelle and a dozen or so of her friends. Oh my god, Blaine, it was insane, and so much fun. You have no idea."

In the face of Kurt's exuberance (oh, he's missed it), it's all Blaine can do to keep his voice steady enough to ask, "Will you tell me about it?"

Blaine closes his eyes and listens to Kurt narrate the tale of his evening, about Brody and Rachel molesting the turkey, about the glamorous drag queens, about a night he expected to be lonely abruptly filled with music and joy.

"You know what?" Kurt asks. 

It's rhetorical, but Blaine offers up an encouraging, "What?" in response.

"I think tonight was the first time I've really felt like I belonged here, in New York. Does that make sense?"

It hurts a little bit, strangely: a harsh sharpening of the distance between them, not just geographically, but... "You sound happy, Kurt."

"Happy?" Kurt says as if he's skeptical of the concept. "It was a good night," he says. "You would've loved it."

Blaine presses his lips closed around a smile and the emotion rising thick in his throat. It's not quite, 'I wish you'd been here', but it's something good. A tentative wish for time spent together, he hopes. He wants to say something meaningful and heartfelt, but he's pulsing with words that are too much for now, or, it's too soon to say them again: _I love you, I'm sorry, I miss you, it's so good to hear your voice, please don't ever stop talking to me again, do you think we can be boyfriends again one day?_

"Yeah," Blaine says lamely. "It sounds like I would've."

There's an awkward silence that draws into several heartbeats.

"Thank you for answering your phone," Blaine says at the same time Kurt asks, "So tell me about Sectionals?"

"Oh, I, um. Yeah. It's..." Kurt fumbles. 

"Sorry," Blaine says.

"No, no. I just realized, that's... why you called, right? Did you win?"

It's harder telling Kurt than it was telling his mother. "No."

"No?" Incredulous. "Did The _Warblers_ —?"

"Yeah, but it's a long story," Blaine says. "I don't want to keep you—"

"No, please, you can tell me," Kurt says. "Oh, god, I'm so sorry, Blaine. Is everyone— Are you okay?"

"I-I'm fine," Blaine says, and really lets himself feel it. Losing the chance at Nationals this year is a blow, one that doesn't feel as if it's fallen yet. It's hard to feel anything worse than fine with Kurt at the other end of the line, listening. Blaine takes a breath, unfolds his legs, and leans back against his pillows, tucking the phone between his head and the pillow. "I'm good, actually. It's weird, but, right now?" _Talking to you, hearing your voice._ "I'm okay."

"So The Warblers, huh?" Kurt asks. "How did that happen?"

Blaine tells him. They stay on the phone for nearly an hour longer, and it gets easier to talk, to laugh, to fill the silences. They don't talk about _them_ , but they talk, and by the time Kurt groans and says, "I'm sorry, but I really need to go help Rachel with the clean up," it's painlessly easy for Blaine to say, "All right," and "Enjoy yourself."

At that, Kurt snorts a chuckle into the phone. "I'll _try_ ," he says sarcastically, and then, after a moment, he adds softly and sincerely, "Hey, uh, thanks for calling. It's really..." Kurt trails off with a hitch of his breath, and he starts again. "It's so good to talk to you again, Blaine."

"It is," Blaine agrees. 

He holds his phone in his hand for a while after they hang up. The words gather in his throat again, and he whispers them into the silence of his room. "I love you, too."


	3. All the Fading Melodies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A missing moment from 4x04 "The Break Up". Kurt cannot stay in bed with Blaine. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #3 Consume.
> 
> Title from Shelley's poem, "Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats"

**October 2012**

Revulsion creeps cold beneath Kurt's skin. He lies on his side at the precipitous edge of the mattress. On the wrong side of his own damn bed. Behind him is Blaine, rigid, silent, and unwelcome. Beside him, the darkened mirror reflects little, but he stares, unblinking, at its smooth black gloss that seems, right now, to devour every small glimmer of light rather than reflect anything.

He should have told Blaine to sleep on the couch. Or on the fucking _street_. 

(No, not that. Kurt checks the vengeful impulse.) 

But, earlier, trying to say anything to Blaine felt like worms crawling up his tongue. And right now, it feels like that's all that exists inside him, twisting, ravening worms of regret and shame and fury and incomprehension. Every good memory and tender moment with Blaine is rotting with betrayal, like there's a poison seeping back through time, corrupting every bright thing they shared.

His rage feels childish in its viciousness; even in the midst of it, some small, still-rational piece of Kurt's psyche tries to soothe. It stops him from spitting out every worm of hurtful words at Blaine, as if that would make him feel better. Nothing will make him feel better, and he saw the pain in Blaine's face, saw his tears. He may resent them, may wish to deny them, but he saw them.

Kurt gets up. Like a sharp hook with a lead sinker, gravity snags his heart, nearly makes his knees buckle. He can't stay in here. He doesn't look at Blaine to see if he's awake or asleep. He doesn't fucking care.

(Except, oh, he _does_.) 

He picks up the photo frame on his desk before he creeps out of his curtained chamber. He grabs the throw Carole crocheted from the back of the futon and curls up in the old car seat his Dad gave him.

The photo in his lap stays face down at first. Kurt strokes the curved edges of the frame, and he lets the tears come. Restrained, but permitted to flow. They bleed away some of the tension and terrible ache. Each softly exhaled sob draws some of the poison from his heart. His insides stop squirming, and Kurt turns the frame over in his hands. He blinks his eyes clear and turns on the floor lamp by the chair.

There, behind the glass, a moment frozen. Blaine's smile and Kurt's smile. Together smiling. The two of them holding each other: terrified and brave and hopeful in their tuxedos; Kurt in his crown, scepter awkwardly held. Kurt grits his teeth and sets his jaw. He won't let himself lose this, won't let the precious joy of that moment wither into dust, as if it never happened at all. The boy in his bed may not be the boy in this photo any longer, but the boy in this photo existed. The boy in this photo _loved_ him.

(And Kurt loves that boy.)

Reclaiming the emotion spurs more tears. Their flavor is familiar to Kurt: mourning. He weeps as he loses track of the cadence of time. Turns the lamp back off and huddles in the darkness. Within his mind, he tries to purge the poison from the damaged memories. Tries to untwist the crumpled mental photographs, smooth them out, clean them off, and remember them as they were. It takes so much energy, like all the torn edges may only be knitted together with the sinews of his own heart, leaving it rent and ragged and gaping raw. 

He hopes he can survive it, because this feels a lot like dying.


	4. My Dream Was Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set within 4x07 "Dynamic Duets". A new friendship for Blaine forms with a conversation about the lies we tell each other to protect ourselves. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #4 Dirt.
> 
> Title from the lyrics to The Police’s "Truth Hits Everybody"

**November 2012**

In the boys' locker room, Blaine strips off his shirt, turns it inside out, and takes it to the sink. He turns the cold tap on full (his mother always said never to use hot water when rinsing out a stain) and lets the water run through the fabric, taking some of the paint away in a milky swirl. Not nearly all of it. He doesn't want to have to explain this to his Mom, or throw away the shirt, so—

Blaine's first instinct is to call Kurt. He's trying to let that instinct go, but Kurt _would_ know how to get white paint out of a red polo shirt without damaging the material. But Blaine knows he won't get an answer. Just because he's feeling lighter today, doesn't mean anything has changed for Kurt.

He texts Tina instead. She'll be dealing with her own paint mess, and she knows fabrics and clothes. She texts back her address.

.

Tina answers the door with wet hair pulled into a pony tail. She's wearing jeans and an oversized gray mens' t-shirt. A smudge of white paint remains at her hairline near her ear. She smiles at Blaine cautiously and gestures for him to come in.

The Cohen-Chang house is a sun-filled contemporary design, with vaulted, angled ceilings and enormous windows. Geometric patterned rugs in modern neutrals pave the golden-hued wood floors, glass topped tables shine, and the scent of fresh flowers tickles in Blaine's nose. He doesn't let it remind him of Kurt, instead focuses on where he is.

"Hey," Blaine says with a smile. "Thanks for inviting me over." He lifts the plastic bag with his soiled clothes. He is himself in his McKinley Titans' gym t-shirt and sweatpants; his hair’s still damp at his neck. The clean white of the paint is scrubbed from his cheeks, which still tingle with the memory of Brittany's fingers and her kiss. It's been a strange day. "I definitely need your help," Blaine says.

Tina smiles more brightly. "The laundry's this way," she says. He follows her.

.

Tina mixes up a solution of vinegar, ammonia, and salt, gives Blaine a pair of latex gloves and a microfiber cloth. She dons a pair of gloves too and scoops her green dress from the laundry sink. Then she shows him how to gently scrub the paint stains with the solution. They sit on folded towels on the tile floor. The smell burns in Blaine's sinuses ("Are you sure we're not gassing ourselves to death?" Blaine jokes) but slowly and with patience, the paint shifts.

.

Their clothes are in the washing machine now, and Tina is boiling the kettle for tea. They stand in the kitchen on opposite sides of a stainless steel topped island. Tina puts a brand new bag of Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano cookies between them and asks Blaine what sort of tea he'd like. 

"Earl Grey?" Blaine responds. "With honey and milk, please?" It's the way Kurt used to make it for him in the evenings, when it was too late for coffee. She sets the carton of milk, jar of honey, and a spoon next to the bag of cookies. It's not exactly perfunctory, but there's something off there. It makes Blaine wonder if she's missing Mike the way he misses Kurt. If maybe she used to make tea for Mike after school.

"So, um, can I ask you something?" Blaine starts.

"I guess," Tina says. She puts a tea bag in each of two mugs and pours the boiling water over them.

"You don't have to tell me, but I was wondering. Why did you break up with Mike?"

With her lips pressed into a thin line, Tina lowers her attention to dunking her teabag in and out of her mug. In and out, up and down. Then she releases a sigh and the teabag, and says, "I didn't break up with Mike. He broke up with me."

"Oh," Blaine says. It's not what Tina has been telling everyone at school, that she broke up with Mike—no explanation given—but she still loves him. The tension between them during the week of _Grease_ auditions made Blaine wonder, but he didn't consider that she'd lied.

"He didn't tell you?" she asks, but continues before Blaine has a chance to reply. "No, of course he didn't. Mike never talks about other people like that. Not even me." She grimaces and looks back up at Blaine. "Surprised?"

"No. I mean, I don't— What happened?"

One shoulder hitches up and Tina tilts her head, glances down again. "It's complicated," she starts. "I think, near the end of the summer, I knew it was coming. As it got closer to him leaving, it felt like we started holding on to each other too tight. Do you know what I mean?"

Blaine reaches for the honey. "I'm not sure I do."

"Like we both knew it was over, but neither of us wanted to admit it."

"Oh, okay," Blaine says. He never felt that way with Kurt. If anything, it all felt easier this past summer. Blaine believed it was going to be fine, right up until it wasn't. Or, he wasn't.

"It was... little things," she says. "Like, how we talked about the future. Mike asked his mother to teach me how to cook."

Blaine blinks at her in confusion.

"I went along with it, because it was important to Mike, right? His family is very traditional, and I'm really... _not_. But I thought I'd try for him, because I knew it was important to him, to embrace some of those traditions, and I think he still felt like—he'd even say sometimes—I wasn't _Asian_ enough. Like, what does that even mean?" She sighs. "I did love him. I _do_..."

The unspoken 'but' hangs until Blaine has to voice it. "But?"

"At some point, it started to feel like he wanted me to be more like her? Don't get me wrong, Mike's Mom is amazing. I adore her, but I'm not like her. I don't want to be, and, god, I didn't want it to be like that with Mike. We fought about it." Tina lifts her tea bag out of her mug and squeezes it against her spoon. "I _hate_ cooking, Blaine," Tina says. And then she grins, a little wildly, like she's just confessed some huge and necessary secret.

The grin is contagious, and they share it for a while. Tina opens the bag of cookies and fishes out the top paper wrapper, takes two cookies, and pushes it closer to Blaine.

"Kurt was teaching me how to cook," Blaine says and takes a cookie. "It was actually pretty fun, cooking with him. I miss it a lot."

With a scowl, Tina looks at him as she chews. She swallows and asks him, "So why _don't_ you call him?"

Blaine nods as he turns over his own confession in his mind. He told Sam, and that was okay—a relief even. "I do call him," Blaine says quietly. "I call him every day."

"Then—?"

"He doesn't answer," Blaine says. "He never does."

Blaine didn't cry in front of Sam, but the burn welling up in his eyes now, he can't contain. He bows his head and wipes at his face, tries to blink back the tears and keep his breath from shuddering; he fails.

"Blaine," Tina says, and then she's moving around the island and putting her hands, warm but uncertain, on his shoulders, turning him toward her. _Pulling_ him toward her into an awkward embrace. It's not quite a hug—they're both too stiff, this is too new and strange, they don't really know each other or how to fit—but, it's... nice.

"It's okay," Tina says, and her voice is more certain than her arms. Blaine leans into her more, absorbs the heat of her body, inhales the herbal scent of shampoo lingering in her hair along with the chemical scents of the laundry that cling more subtly to her clothes. Her caring, human presence, it's not the anchor Kurt used to be, but it's enough in this moment. He relaxes, lets himself cry, and she gathers him closer, and tells him again, firmly. "It's okay, Blaine."

They're the same words he tells himself, repeated like a mantra, late at night, when he can't sleep and hope feels pointless. But it's also the first time since he’s lost Kurt that anyone else has spoken those words to him. This time, hearing them from Tina, on a day that's been unusually full of other people's care, maybe he can believe it.


	5. Youth Beloved in Vain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set over episode 4x05 "The Role You Were Born to Play". While living off Ambien and The Notebook, Kurt feels like a stranger in his own skin. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #5 Echo.
> 
> Title from a verse translation of Ovid's "Echo and Narcissus" in Metamorphoses.

**October 2012**

Kurt looks into the mirror in the mornings. It's the first thing he does most days, a long habit born of seeking the reassurance of his own image: it reflects his identity, his truth, and his pride. It shows him the evidence of how he cares for himself and how he knows himself. He looks into the mirror, and he sees Kurt Hummel looking back. This is how he starts the day.

Today, when he looks, he sees a stranger. It's like his internal image of himself, the thing against which he matches the person in the mirror, is gone—irretrievable from memory. He sits on the edge of his bed and stares at the young man in the mirror. He's familiar enough, but he doesn't feel like _him_. 

On the refrigerator, the calendar tells Kurt, it's been a week since Blaine showed up at the door with two dozen red roses; each day since is crossed off with a red line. Seven identical days. He wore the same jacket three times. 

Rachel puts two bagels in the toaster while Kurt makes the coffee. She sings scales while he goes through his phone, reading and then deleting every guilt-ridden apologetic text from Blaine, every message professing renewed devotion. He clears his missed call notifications, and doesn't listen to his voicemail.

.

The face looking back at him in the bathroom mirror, toothbrush jammed into its cheek, spiky wet hair, pink flush from the heat of the shower doesn't seem any more like him. Kurt takes the same time and care with his skin and his hair anyway. Dressing is the same meticulous procedure it always is, but each item of clothing feels like an accessory belonging to a doll, not part of him or anything he owns. He still makes sure every line is perfect, every button and buckle precisely fastened, but all day Kurt feels disconnected. 

Maybe it's the Ambien. He Googles for side-effects while he's at work, but he doesn't know what to call this. Is he having hallucinations? He doesn't think that's it.

Kurt still wears black; his cufflinks today are silver bird skulls. He fetches coffee and file folders, he attends meetings and listens, he answers the phones, he stays late putting in all his extra energy because this is his future. He gets home close to midnight. Sees his reflection in the mirror by the door as he unwinds his scarf and unbuttons his coat. The boy in the mirror's skin is milk pale from the cold wind, his blue eyes glassy-bright, and his lips rose-petal red. His expression is smoothed into an aloof stoicism. He looks pretty—girlish and delicate—and Kurt wonders if that's all others see, a neatly painted, hollowed out figurine of a person.

Rachel makes him eat: canned soup and toast. Afterward, he takes a pint of ice cream to the living room, she curls up beside him with a pillow to share between them, and asks him gently, "Again?" when he presses play on _The Notebook_. It's been in the Blu-ray player for the past five days. 

He says, "Yes." Keeps hoping he'll find some insight or a solution in the film. Some way to map its story to his own. But they don't fit. There's no hope in the sentimentality of the fiction. He wonders if that's all his own love was after all: fiction. Maybe love is a story we tell ourselves because we've grown up watching love stories. Maybe it isn't real. Maybe whatever he thought he had with Blaine truly was something he made up in his head, from the start right through until the end.

In the film, Noah writes to Allie, " _I'm not bitter anymore, because I know that what we had was real._ " And if Noah is right, then the bitterness curdling Kurt's heart proves it: it wasn't real with Blaine. He has no fire in his heart, no peace in his mind any longer, and without them, he's not even sure if he is himself real. He defines himself through his passions, but nothing has moved him this week. 

Rachel pulls the afghan over her legs and dozes against Kurt's shoulder.

.

The next morning, Kurt again sits on the edge of his bed and looks in the mirror, same as always. But this morning, he looks harder: both more critically and more objectively. At least he tries. He wonders who it was that Blaine saw when they were together.

He read that infidelity may be a symptom of a person not having their emotional needs met. He studies himself and tries to discern what it is he lacks that Blaine needed. What was it that Blaine couldn't ask him for? What did he believe Kurt couldn't—or wouldn't—give him if he did? Was it truly just the distance?

Over their bagels and coffee he asks Rachel her opinion, but she tells him it wasn't his fault and he shouldn't blame himself. He should keep his eyes forward and keep moving onward, like she is. Then she asks him if he'll help her prepare for her audition in _The Glass Menagerie_. He's grateful for her offering him both a distraction and a break from his routine.

.

Late that evening he stares into the mirror long enough and hard enough, his sense of himself inverts. It's like watching clouds until it feels like they're stationary and you're the one moving. He blinks, and suddenly, he's the reflection. It must be the real Kurt Hummel looking at him from the other side, and that's why he doesn't feel right any longer. He's just a shade in the mirror, a puppet going through the motions of another boy's life. 

He doesn't take Ambien that night. His head clears and he can't sleep. But he thinks, and he wonders. All the time he's spent looking at Blaine, did he ever truly see him? Maybe he missed something important. Maybe what he saw in Blaine wasn't actually Blaine but an echo of Kurt's own desires, as if Blaine were some kind of mirror, reflecting back all the things Kurt's heart projected into him.

An urgent need overtakes him, to see Blaine again. Kurt pulls the album and the photo frames from the bottom of his drawer. Sits on the thin rug by his bed and shuffles through them, looking for _Blaine_ , trying to understand what it is that he's missed. But photographs aren't enough, memories aren't enough. With a sigh, Kurt stills his hands.

Would it matter anyway, if he understood why Blaine did it? His understanding wouldn't magically unravel the hurt or the betrayal. Would knowledge aid forgiveness? Or would it just make it harder for him to let go?

Kurt packs the photographs back into the drawer. Rachel may be right. He just needs to keep his chin up and his eyes forward, needs to stop worrying at the past and push forward into his future, and eventually, he'll feel like he's living again, and Blaine will be an old, sad memory instead of a trap around his heart. It's the adult thing to do, to let go and move on. 

And he needs to stop staring into the mirror, trying to force a recognition and understanding that may never come. He must accept that he's not the same boy he was, and he never will be again. This is the man he's becoming.

The problem is, he doesn't want to stop. He doesn't want to let go or give up or give in—not yet. So he'll wait for an opportunity to see Blaine again, and then, maybe, he'll know which side of the mirror he's on, whether he has a choice or whether all he can do is surrender.


	6. Those Stumbling Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set between 4x11 "Sadie Hawkins" and 4x12 "Naked". In a phone call after the Sadie Hawkin's dance, Kurt has something to tell Blaine. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #6 Falter.
> 
> Title from the lyrics of "These Foolish Things" a song covered by a long list of artists including Bryan Ferry.

**January 2013**

In Blaine's bedroom, Bryan Ferry's voice lilts and jaunts over the piano and horn of "These Foolish Things". Blaine sings to his reflection in his dresser mirror as he unknots his tie. A smear of Tina's lipgloss glints pink on his cheek, and the screen of his phone is lit with a text from Kurt: "Enjoy the dance! Call me when you're home?" Blaine's intestines feel as if they're working through _Knots: The Complete Visual Guide._

_"Oh, how the ghost of you clings_  
 _These foolish things_  
 _Remind me of you,"_ Blaine sings to Kurt's portrait. He does a twirl as he pulls his tie free of his collar.

He feels like laughing. A few hours ago, he felt like crying. Too much muchness is stuffed into his chest and head, and he needs to release the surfeit of emotion somehow. But at the same time, none of the fullness is soothing the itchy restlessness vibrating deep in his flesh. He aches for something more familiar and more comforting. He hangs up the velvet suit jacket and his tuxedo trousers, sits to unbutton his shirt and pull off his socks. Once he's down to just his undershirt and briefs, he launches himself onto his bed, belly first, and picks up his phone.

It's only eleven, and he knows the connection he needs to make.

Kurt picks up immediately. "It can't have been that good a night if you're home an hour before your curfew. I hope Tina behaved herself."

Blaine heaves a soft laugh along with an, "I _missed_ you tonight," that comes out far more breathless and desperate than he means it to.

There's no immediate response from Kurt.

"I'm sorry," Blaine blurts. "That maybe came out wrong? I—"

"It's okay," Kurt says. "I've spent most of this week missing you, too."

"You have?" Blaine thrills to hear it.

"Everything's so new at NYADA, and Rachel's been busy with Brody, so I've been on my own. There've been a lot of things I'd like to have shared with you, you know, _live_ , as they happened. That's why you've been getting so many texts and photos." The warmth in Kurt's voice lets Blaine imagine he's smiling.

"I've enjoyed getting your texts and photos," Blaine says. "So you're doing all right?"

There's a noncommittal sound from Kurt. "Yeah, I think so. College is remarkably not unlike High School in a lot of ways, and it's weird. I didn't expect that so much? To be feeling... on the outside again. Honestly, Blaine? I've been feeling lonely this week."

_Oh._ Blaine rolls to his back and cradles the phone with both hands near his cheek; he closes his eyes. "I'm sorry you're lonely, Kurt," he says softly. "I'm here for you now."

"I know," Kurt says, warm again.

And it feels, as the silence stretches between them easy with affection, that they're sharing a moment of perfect concord.

"What can I do? Do you want to Skype?" Blaine asks. "Watch a movie?"

"It's late," Kurt says. "Could you maybe just tell me about your evening? Like, what did everyone wear? How did the music go? Indulge my homesickness a little bit?"

"Yeah, sure," Blaine says. "I have good news, and I have some photos on my phone. I'll send them to you now, so you have visual aids. Just a sec, let me just—" Blaine pulls the phone away from his face so he can tap through to the photo gallery.

" _Wait_. Blaine?" Kurt interrupts, his voice tinny, small, and urgent.

Blaine brings the phone back up to his ear. "Hmm?"

Kurt's sigh rushes static through the line. "There's something I need to tell you first."

Hope wells up in Blaine's chest. Maybe Kurt's missing him this week means Kurt's found his way to forgiveness, and maybe the time they spent together at Christmas has helped show Kurt that he can still trust Blaine. "You can tell me anything," Blaine reassures him.

But the tone of Kurt's next words doesn't reassure Blaine: "Yeah," Kurt says, and he almost sounds glum. "You told me I could tell you, and I really feel like I should. You should know."

"Okay?" Blaine says.

"I, um?"

He sits up, goes cold. "Just tell me, Kurt."

"I met someone," Kurt says.

Three simple words stun Blaine into silence. His Roxy Music playlist has shuffled its way to "To Turn You On" and the song expands and intrudes, growing too loud and too heavy with memory and shared daydreams, of singing with Kurt and being sung to in their intimate moments, as Ferry croons:

_"Is it raining in New York_  
 _On Fifth Avenue?_  
 _And off Broadway after dark_  
 _Love the lights don't you?"_

In the absence of a reply from Blaine, Kurt continues, haltingly, "Uh, he's the head of the Glee club here. The Adam's Apples. He's handsome and funny... and kind, and I think— I think he really likes me."

_"I could walk you through the park_  
 _If you're feeling blue_  
 _Or whatever... "_

Blaine gets up and jabs his iPod to silence, and then he grabs his dressing gown, pulls it on to banish the new chill from his bare arms and legs. He should say something, but his tongue feels like clay.

"Blaine?" Kurt asks, frail and uncertain.

"Um, so you like him too, then?" Blaine manages; he holds his phone between his ear and his shoulder and ties the sash too tightly, with quick, sharp jerks.

A relieved huff of breath, and Kurt says, "I think maybe I could? I like the way he smiles at me. He told me I look like a young Paul Newman. I asked him out to coffee, and he said yes."

And just like that, Blaine feels like crying again. He shouldn't. He's the one who fucked up, and he's the one who let Kurt go. He told Kurt they were friends—best friends—and Kurt could tell him exactly this sort of thing. He's got no stake in Kurt's love life anymore. They're friends. They're _friends._

"Are you okay?" Kurt asks.

"That's great, Kurt. I'm happy for you." Blaine says because that's what he's supposed to say.

"Yeah?"

Blaine makes himself smile, if only for his own sake. He's sad for himself, but he can be—he _will_ be—happy for Kurt. "Yeah."

"Okay, good. I know this is... _so_ weird, but I didn't want it to be like I was keeping a secret from you."

"No, thank you for telling me."

Another pause. "So, you said you had good news and photos?" Kurt asks, a tentative entreaty.

They talk, and Blaine tries to feel the connection to Kurt he wants and misses, but it's different now. Something unfamiliar, something cooler. He doesn't even feel it when Kurt gushes over the cut of his dinner suit and tells him he looks gorgeous in velvet. Blaine looks at the photos of himself with Tina, looks at the photos of Sam and Brittany, listens to Kurt's voice, and all he can feel is foolish.


	7. Shining Down For Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set within 4x14 "I Do". Kurt comes home for Will & Emma's wedding. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #7 Gift.
> 
> Title from the lyrics to Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough"
> 
> (Burt's cancer is present, but he's doing well)

**February 2013**

A small, unfamiliar car is parked behind Finn's truck in the drive when LeRoy Berry drops Kurt off at his house. Kurt flew in with Rachel from New York after their Friday classes wrapped up. Mr. Schuester and Miss Pillsbury's wedding is tomorrow afternoon, Valentine's Day.

"Would you like to come in?" Kurt asks from the backseat. "For a drink or anything?"

LeRoy looks at Rachel, and Rachel turns back toward Kurt with her mouth twisted into a moue of indecision, then shakes her head. "Not yet," she says. "I'm meant to be meeting him tomorrow morning for coffee anyway."

"Thanks, Kurt, but we should get home soon anyway," LeRoy says. "Hiram's been cooking all day."

Kurt expresses his gratitude and gets his suitcase from the trunk, waves as they back out of the driveway.

The snow on the path to the door is bright in the winter dusk, well trodden, and shining with a fresh crust of ice. The slick, uneven surface breaks crisply under Kurt's feet. He has to carry his bag, and he winces at the thought of what the ice is doing to his Hugo Boss derbies. He'll need to remind Finn of the odd jobs that need doing when his Dad is too tired. It's a slipping hazard too. At least someone cleared the drive.

Then the front door opens with the familiar _clack_ of the brass knocker and _creak_ of the hinge, and light pours out across the ice and snow. "Hey!" comes his Dad's voice. The porch light comes on too. Kurt looks up to see his father silhouetted in the doorway. He grins and picks up his pace, trusting his balance to get him across the remainder of the footpath and up the short steps without mishap.

"Dad," he says, drops his bag, and goes into his father's open arms.

"You made it," his Dad says and squeezes him tightly.

.

Inside is home. It's familiar in a preconscious sort of way, but newly revealed with a perspective gained from having been gone these past months. Small details, once elided in the past, come into focus: the smell of home, an undefinable constant; the acoustics of the kitchen sounds mingling with the television and filtering through to the foyer; the quality of the light upon the lines of his father's face. A deep relief of tension follows. Some deep simmering anxiety Kurt didn't even realize he'd been holding slips away as his psyche settles into safety, comfort, and love. Kurt sets his case by the foot of the stairs. He'll take it upstairs later.

"Who else is here?" Kurt asks as he unbuttons his coat.

His Dad holds out a hand for Kurt's coat. "It's Friday, so Blaine's here, helping Carole make my rabbit food."

"That's his car?" Kurt passes his coat to his Dad, who hangs it up. Kurt passes a hand lightly over his hair. Peers into the mirror over the console table, straightens his collar, rearranges his scarf, and smooths an eyebrow. He wasn’t expecting Blaine.

"Yep. His Dad got him the Prius for Christmas, he said."

"Oh," Kurt says, blinks, and glances back at his Dad, who's looking back at him with an oddly pleased smile. Kurt smiles back. "You look good, Dad."

"Yep," his Dad says and keeps smiling. "And so do you, so stop fussing."

Kurt laughs as his cheeks warm.

.

Seeing Blaine in the kitchen with Carole is familiar again, perhaps too familiar. It makes the time between now and last winter compress. Except, this time last year, Blaine was recovering from his eye injury. The memory twists into nostalgia sharpened by longing. Kurt's breath halts in his lungs for the flash of regret mingled with the well-remembered ache of desire.

But Kurt exhales it, and takes a moment to quietly watch from the archway. Neither Carole nor Blaine have noticed his presence yet. Warmth unfurls in his chest, the same as always when he sees Blaine. Kurt continues to ignore the accompanying pang of sadness, lets himself look and appreciate.

A pot steams on the stove top, and Carole has both hands buried in a large glass bowl of dark green kale leaves while, at the opposite end of the island, Blaine julienne slices an orange pepper. The chef's knife looks comfortable in his hand, and his cuts are precise. It gives Kurt a burst of pride to see.

Then Blaine looks up and sees him. Blaine's gaze widens and softens, floods with the glow of affection that has always, always made Kurt's heart flutter and his belly clench. And somehow, Kurt has forgotten just how much it affects him: how beautiful Blaine is, his hair neat and shining, his face open and his smile bright, his body, trim and fit in the clean lines of his shirt, vest, and slacks.

"Hi," Kurt exhales, and Blaine releases the knife.

" _Hi_ ," Blaine says, and he comes around the island.

"Kurt!" Carole says. "You're early." She lifts her hands out of the kale and shakes them off over the bowl.

There's only a second of hesitation before Kurt reaches for Blaine to hug him.

"My hands are sticky," Blaine protests with a nervous laugh.

"Don't care," Kurt says.

.

Both Carole and Blaine decline Kurt's offer of help in the kitchen, and he doesn't press it because it looks like they've got everything in hand. There's not much room for a third body anyway. So Kurt goes to the living room to hang out with Finn and his Dad until the meal is ready.

Dinner impresses. There's a kale salad with mango, honey, and lemon; marinated tofu steaks with peppers and shiitake mushrooms; farro with walnuts and spring onions; and Blaine says they’ll all need to save room for the vegan cheesecake he brought. (He made it himself last night.) 

Kurt marvels at the quality and variety of the ingredients, and Carole explains that Blaine brings them organic vegetables from the market in Dublin twice a week. Which Kurt didn't know; neither Blaine nor his family had told him. He smiles his surprised gratitude to Blaine, who returns the smile with a flush staining his cheeks, right before he glances down and away in a borderline flirtatious display of modesty.

(Or, perhaps Kurt is reading things between them weirdly, because of the way his own heart keeps stuttering and leaping every time he and Blaine make eye contact.)

Kurt sits adjacent to his father, and keeps an eye on his plate, makes sure he's eating enough. His Dad eats slowly, but methodically. Even has seconds of the kale salad. "Do you guys do this every Friday?" Kurt asks.

"Family Friday dinner," his Dad says. "But they make me eat this kind of stuff all week, don't worry, Kurt."

"It's really good," Kurt says, in mild defense. Carole and Blaine worked hard on the meal, and the food is genuinely tasty. After weeks of getting most of his calories from too many bagels and Italian pastries, Kurt is grateful for the infusion of nutrition.

"It's not always good," Finn says. "That carrot noodle thing with the cauliflower sauce and all the mustard? That was not good."

"Looked like dog vomit," his Dad mutters under his breath. Finn stifles a chortle.

Carole rolls her eyes. "I'm never living that one down, am I? It was an early effort," she says.

"It wasn't... _that_ bad," Blaine says.

"Yes, it was," Finn insists. "And the smell, oh my god!"

"Smelled like dog vomit," his Dad says.

And then Carole cracks up, Finn starts giggling, and Blaine covers his face with both hands while his shoulders shake. His Dad looks on with amused accomplishment. Kurt blinks at them all; their hilarity is infectious enough, he finds himself grinning. He missed this.

.

The vegan cheesecake lives up to Blaine's promise. It's creamy, rich, and appropriately decadent. The cut fresh fruit arranged on top is almost too beautiful to cut. Kurt sits at the dining table with Blaine while his Dad, Carole, and Finn take their plates back to the living room to watch the Friday night movie.

"Raw macadamia nuts," Blaine says, when Kurt asks what's giving the cake such a convincing texture. "They're good for your Dad, too."

For a moment, Kurt nearly reaches across the table. His arm muscles contract with the impulse, but he clenches his hand and doesn't. He's bubbling up inside with so much affection and gratitude and the comfortable _fit_ of being home, it may be clouding his judgment. And he is, he has to remind himself, theoretically dating Adam, even if that's remained casual and non-exclusive while Kurt waits for some ineffable _more_ to spark.

So instead of touching Blaine, Kurt just says, "Thank you, Blaine."

Blaine looks at him with amused curiosity. "I promised you I'd look out for him."

Kurt swallows the emotion in his throat and nods. Blaine always has kept his promises.

.

After lunch the next day, Blaine picks Kurt up. Tina's in the front seat as Blaine's date. Finn left early to meet Rachel at The Lima Bean, so Kurt was happy to carpool with Blaine and Tina.

"Hey, Kurt," Tina says to him as he slides into the backseat. She's smiling, but there's something of a challenge in her tone. Kurt doesn't worry about it. He spots a slim, wrapped box in the footwell beside him and remembers he forgot to get a gift. He doesn't even have a card.

.

At the church, familiar faces pass them in the parking lot as they make their way toward the open doors. Tina catches sight of Mercedes and jogs ahead of them to go say hello. Kurt waves to Mercedes, but turns to Blaine. "What did you get them for a wedding present?" he asks.

They stop walking and Blaine turns to him, squinting in the sunlight. "Oh, just a nice photo frame. I couldn't really think of anything else."

"Monogrammed I presume?" Kurt asks.

Blaine grins and the light catches his smile, and Kurt doesn't fail to notice—or appreciate—how handsome Blaine looks, standing in the pale winter sunlight in his neatly tailored dinner suit. "Of course."

Kurt bites his lip and considers. "Do you think—? Or, rather, would you mind if I signed your card too? I totally forgot about a gift, and I can pay—"

"That's no problem at all, Kurt," Blaine says. "You can sign it now, if you want. We have time."

So they walk back to the car, and Blaine's fingertips skim Kurt's elbow as they go, and even through the layers of his coat, suit, and shirt, Kurt feels the light touch everywhere. Curious, he looks at Blaine and Blaine looks back, and if the heat in Blaine's gaze is nothing more than the sun and not the answer the impatient passion Kurt feels billowing up within his own chest, then Kurt has never been able to read Blaine at all.

Still, he stands patiently by the car as Blaine opens the back door and crawls across the back seat to reach for the card that's tucked under the ribbon of the gift. "Do you have a pen?" Blaine asks over his shoulder.

But Kurt's attention is too much on the pull of the fine wool across Blaine's thigh and the curve of his backside, the breadth of his shoulders, the way his combed-smooth hair defiantly curls just behind his ear. Kurt steals a glance around the parking lot, sees they're alone enough, and slides into the back seat next to Blaine. Pulls the door closed behind him.

"Kurt?" Blaine asks, and turns on the seat, card in hand.

"Hi?" Kurt says, and he reaches out now, one nervous hand, to touch the crisp ironed fold of Blaine's collar. His gaze follows the drag of his fingertip around the tender skin of Blaine's throat as his touch comes around to the knot of Blaine's tie. He sees how Blaine's breath jumps. His thumb skims up to seek Blaine's pulse, lightly strokes across the speeding flutter of it, and Kurt lifts his gaze to find Blaine's lips parted and his pupils wide. "May I?" he asks.

"Yes," Blaine says. " _Kurt_." The card slips from Blaine's hand to the floor and he reaches for the lapel of Kurt's coat.

Leaning in—Blaine pulling him in—feels to Kurt like moving in stop motion animation: each increment of distance crossed between them is its own flashbulb moment. And then his lips touch Blaine's, so pliant and eagerly opening, and his body floods with heat so fast it makes him dizzy. He hears the rush of Blaine's breath come in through his nose, the hiccup of his own as he tries to catch it, and they're kissing, warm and deeply yielding. Blaine pulls Kurt down with him to lie upon the seat.

Between one kiss and the next, Kurt arranges his legs, fits their bodies together better, and murmurs, breathless, "I still want you."

And Blaine's hands find the buttons of Kurt's overcoat, and he answers, "You still have me."


	8. And I Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 4x12 "Naked". Lonely, Blaine goes to Scandals looking for a human connection, but what he finds isn't what he expects. For klaineadvent prompt #8 Human.
> 
> Title from Erasure's "Breathe".

**January 2013**

Friday night, Blaine stands with a linen dish towel in his hand in the Hummel-Hudson kitchen. Finn rinses the apple-green enameled Dutch oven and passes it to Blaine. Methodically, Blaine sweeps the towel around the inside of the pot. He steals another glance at the clock over the door. Just past eight. Which means Kurt will be with Adam, out on their first official date: dinner and a show in New York—perhaps even a walk beneath the lights of Broadway.

The knowledge is like a deep paper cut somewhere vital: acute and focused—a constant stinging ache he can't quite banish from his awareness for long. It had been _their_ dream first New York date together. But now, as Blaine hefts the heavy pot up to hang it by its handle on the pot rack, five hundred miles away, Kurt's longstanding fantasy date is being fulfilled with someone else. 

It's possible Kurt hadn't exactly meant to tell him. It came out at the tail end of one of Kurt's now nightly rants about Brody and Rachel. About how she hadn't even asked Kurt before inviting Brody to move in, and Brody's appalling and inappropriate lack of modesty, and how he was defiling every surface in the loft with his bare ass. "I swear, Blaine," Kurt said. "I'm going to have to sign up for a monthly subscription of Lysol disinfecting spray. Amazon sells it by the three pack." Blaine had laughed at that, but then Kurt had said, "Ugh. I need to get out more. Thank god I've got a date with Adam tomorrow."

"Oh," Blaine said, to which Kurt replied, "Crap, I'm sorry?" and all Blaine could think to say next was, "Please don't be." They talked about it a little bit, to keep things casual and friendly, to try to defuse the tension and awkward fumbling with words. Blaine wonders when this will get easier, or if it ever will.

Finn nearly startles Blaine when he hands him the lid to the pot, and Blaine takes his time making sure there's not a drop of water left on the glossy surface. "Did you want to sign the calendar I'm sending to Kurt and Rachel?" Finn asks him. "Or would that be too weird?"

"Too weird, definitely," Blaine says.

They work in silence for several minutes, Blaine attends to drying each dish thoroughly to keep his mind from wandering too far: what's Kurt wearing? Did Adam bring him flowers? How did Kurt smile when he answered the door? Pointless details that are none of his business. He hopes Adam makes Kurt smile, even if that hope feels more like an especially pointed regret behind his sternum.

"Everything okay, dude?" Finn asks him. "You've been kinda quiet tonight."

"Long week," Blaine says with a quick smile to reassure Finn. "Sam really wore us out."

.

Burt and Carole invite him to stay for a game of Scrabble after the dishes are done. Normally he would remain for the board game or movie or cards or whatever. But it's hard to be here tonight. Harder still to be accepted here when he knows Kurt is moving on, right now, as the clock ticks. He made a promise to Kurt that he means to keep, and he loves Kurt's family—was grateful when Burt invited him back to regular Friday dinners. He would love Kurt's family even if Kurt were never going to speak to him again, but it's a bitter reminder that he once hoped this family would become his in-laws. 

So Blaine says good night, and makes his way out into the cold night. And he wonders, if Kurt ends up with a new boyfriend, what does that make Blaine? The idea of their best friendship is predicated upon a kind of intimacy that comes from their history, and that can't continue if Kurt is in a relationship with someone new. The distance between them is growing again; he can feel it expanding by inches with each flicker of the glowing numbers on his dashboard. It feels like he's losing Kurt all over again. He thought he was ready for this, has sincerely wished Kurt well, but none of his imaginings allowed for this fuller sense of his own loss.

The inside of his car is slow to warm, and Blaine's woolen gloves slide smoothly upon the steering wheel. Heading straight home on a Friday seems a waste. Sam is at Brittany's, and while Blaine knows he'd be welcome to crash, the last thing he wants is to be the third wheel. Being around Sam when he's feeling as he is, is hard too: a reminder of things unattainable.

There's Tina, but he's not after the company of girls tonight. He's weathered the week well, responded with smiles and genuine, flattered gratitude to the blushing flirtations and fluttering eyelashes of McKinley's female population. Signed so many calendars his wrist aches. The tadpole gays, as Kurt called them, were sweet enough when they came for his autograph, but clearly more into each other. Even if they weren't, they're young in a way he's not sure he's ever truly felt. He can't find what he's looking for there.

Tonight, he wishes for a connection that's substantial—tangible. Something he can do something with—something to _satisfy_. Kurt is moving on, this time for real. It's not happening in Blaine's anxious imagination. The irony is not lost on Blaine, that his fear of this very thing is what created it.

The loneliness has returned throughout the day, stealing through the cracks of his carefully managed contentment. It's the same crawling desperation rooted in a place he cannot reach, the same restless need that sent him on the blind stumble into Eli's bed. 

Unfortunately, Blaine can't think of any romantic options within his reach—the list of other local gay guys his age is pretty short, and none of them appeals. But he still wants what he misses: connection, affection, and visibility. It doesn't have to be serious or made for forever, but he wants it to at least be honest and reciprocated. He needs to meet someone new, find a new place to begin. He's let go, now it's time to move on. So when Blaine gets to the main road, instead of turning in the direction of home, he heads toward Scandals.

.

It's dingier than Blaine remembers. The windowless, decades old contemporary design that had once charmed Blaine with its nostalgia now seems tired. The night last fall with Kurt is lit with bright lights and color in his memory: the glamor of being on the verge of something new with Kurt, the enchantment of finding a place of affirmation. And possibly, also, the pink-tinged glow of alcohol. 

Which then reminds Blaine of walking home in the chill of the night and how Kurt kept pace in his car, until, after a cold two miles in the wrong shoes, Blaine's dented pride finally relented. He got in the backseat, and Kurt drove him home. They hadn't spoken much on the drive—or throughout the next day—and it's not a memory in which Blaine wishes to dwell tonight. Old conflicts with Kurt contain few new insights, none of value anyway.

The commercial steel door gives way to shabby wood paneling and the mingled smells of beer, cologne, and wood varnish. The guy at the door barely looks at him, only cursorily checks his ID, but Blaine looks at him. He looks tired, so Blaine offers a bright, "Thank you," in the hope of cheering the man, but there's no discernible change in his demeanor.

Blaine unfastens his coat and moves toward the blue light of the bar. The eighties continues to live on here; the smooth synth and snaky, pulsing bass of The Pet Shop Boy's "West End Girls" tell him that much. There's a guy who could be Willie Nelson's twin—complete with bandana and braids—sitting at the bar. Blaine leaves an empty stool between him and the man, who looks at him, long and with disinterested appraisal. Blaine smiles reflexively, but turns his attention quickly to the bartender and orders a ginger ale.

"Sure you don't want something stronger, sweetheart?" the bartender asks. He's younger, but not young, with blond hair clipped short and an engaging smile. "You look like you could use it."

"Thanks, but I'm driving," Blaine says, and wonders what's making him look like he needs a drink. A glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the bar shows he is perhaps too wide-eyed, looks a little over eager, so he tries to relax his face and his shoulders into nonchalance. 

While Neil Tennant chants about girls and boys trapped in their dead end urban world, Blaine glances around, attempting a discreet surveillance of the crowd tonight. It's busier than when he came with Kurt. He recognizes the guy dressed as Ginger from last year, but doesn't see any other familiar faces—or anyone his age. The youngest guys there are college age, and judging by the collection of beer bottles on their table, they're well on their way to wasted. A few, diverse men are looking his way with open curiosity and appreciation. Blaine flushes warm under their attention and turns his gaze to the glass of sparkling soda the bartender places before him.

"It's on the house, kid."

It's pleasant to be looked at so openly. The candid expressions of interest linger upon his back, trickling warm down his spine, set a deep thrill in his belly. Best of all, he doesn't need to do anything to earn it. Which is for the good, because he's not really sure what _to_ do. Wait for someone to approach him? It seems awfully passive, but while he learned how to be Kurt's boyfriend, he's never learned how to do this.

The wait isn't long. A body settles upon the empty stool beside him, and a handsome, well-groomed man with long, meticulously styled sideburns turns his attention to Blaine. _Too old_ , is the first thing Blaine thinks. The guy looks old enough to be his father, and the gleam of a wedding band doesn't encourage Blaine to return the man's smile.

And then, from behind him comes, "Hey, is that _Blaine Anderson_?" The voice is, in this context, unexpectedly, reassuringly familiar. Blaine releases a deep breath and swivels on his stool.

"Sebastian Smythe," he says. "Hi."

"Won't you join us?" Sebastian asks, gesturing toward a table by the wall, near the dance floor, where Blaine sees a nervous looking Warbler Trent taking off his jacket and hanging it on the back of a stool. Trent? He looks up and waves tightly at Blaine; his anxious expression gives way to a delighted smile.

"Yeah, that'd be great," Blaine says, relieved to see two familiar faces—at least one of them safe and friendly. And he is curious.

No sooner have they sat than Sebastian is plying Blaine with a line, "So what brings a nice boy like you back to a place like this? Trying to make the most of your single man status?" It's delivered with a self-conscious facetiousness that makes Blaine shake his head with a laugh.

"Something like that," Blaine says. "But... you two?"

"Oh, we're not together," Sebastian says, raising his hands as if to defend himself from the possibility.

Trent rolls his eyes, and says, with a put upon sigh, " _Apparently_ I need to get outside my comfort zone once and a while."

"Yeah, well, this place'll do it," Blaine says, smiling. "But I didn't even know you were friends."

"Well, we're co-captains of The Warblers now, along with Nick," Trent says, and then proceeds to get Blaine caught up on all The Warblers' news since the scandal of Hunter Clarington's court date and expulsion.

The Dalton gossip isn't as interesting as it used to be—there are several names he doesn't recognize—but Blaine listens attentively, though he has to resist an eyeroll when the conversation turns to Sebastian and Trent arguing over which one of them is Octavian and which is Marc Antony. At least they agree Nick is Lepidus. And then that turns into a heated discussion over the historical accuracy of the HBO series _Rome_ , which Blaine has not seen, and so his attention begins to wander.

It's a short trip back to Kurt. His mind goes there so easily, and he's not vigilant enough to resist the familiar pathways. He pokes the ice in the bottom of his empty glass with his straw. He knows little about Adam beyond being a fellow NYADA student, a senior, founder and leader of his Glee club there, handsome, kind, funny, English—and Kurt likes him. It's more than enough for Blaine to know this isn't a rebound fling for Kurt. He's looking to fall in love.

Blaine didn't expect this to happen so soon. He thought he'd have more time to... And there he stalls. Time to what? He's no longer pining. He and Kurt are on good terms. He's able to move past it when he thinks about his mistakes. His heart is mending, but this still hurts. Another man taking Kurt's hand, making Kurt laugh, leaning in to kiss Kurt. The way Blaine knows Kurt's breath will catch and his cheeks will flush—the way he'll reach back. For all the ways Kurt knows to touch Blaine, and the way Blaine knows to touch him, and all the time it took to learn each other, it doesn't seem fair or possible for it to fade into inconsequence. 

It pains Blaine that whatever he's feeling tonight, it's been worse for Kurt. With Eli, he violated the sanctity of their intimacy first. The guilt that lingers is like nausea in his heart, a sickness he wishes he could purge, but all he can do is swallow it. Perhaps the hardest thing here, now, is that Kurt is moving on without forgiving Blaine, which makes the notion of ever receiving Kurt's forgiveness seem even more unlikely, and without it, Blaine's not sure he'll ever be able to breathe properly again.

"Blaine?" Trent asks. His voice presses through the combined haze of Blaine's thoughts and the relatively discordant peppiness of Culture Club's "I'll Tumble 4 Ya".

"Hm? Sorry," Blaine says, blinking and turning his attention to Trent, who is smiling at him with hesitant sympathy. 

"Do you want to dance?" Trent asks him. His words are nervous, but Blaine knows it's not nervousness over the asking, but nervousness over Blaine's maudlin space-out. They've know each other long enough to know there's no attraction between them. Trent is a good friend, even if they've never been all that close.

"Sure," Blaine says, and he looks for Sebastian, who must have excused himself. "Where's—?"

"Trust me, you don't want to know," Trent says, and he stands to offer Blaine his hand.

Taking Trent's hand is nice. There's no charge of anything between them, and it's a simple enough act here. Two boys holding hands here are notable only for their youth. Blaine looks around and sees how they are being watched. 

They don't dance close, or touch very much. But they look at each other, smile, and sing along with Boy George. It quickly turns into them challenging each other to match increasingly complex footwork. It's like a two man, playful Warblers' rehearsal. It's fun. The music is good; the company is good; he can lose himself a little bit.

But each glance he spares over Trent's shoulder, he sees the other men: all adults to his and Trent's adolescence. He sees the faded paint on the rainbow flag, the flickering neon rooster, the missing bulbs in the white lettered "BOYS", and the vintage 80's video playing on the screen over the bar. And suddenly what has seemed a haven, feels like a cloister. 

Around him, he sees few couples, more pairings. It's a diverse collection of men with little more in common than sharing the same cage while looking for some kind of human connection. Blaine twirls and feels a sadness wrap around him. There's an ache in his heart bigger than himself, an overwhelming compassion for the people here. He wonders how many of them have lost love, have never truly loved or been loved at all, or how many are stuck in loveless marriages built on lies? How many are just looking for a few moments of honesty and affirmation. Blaine looks around him and he sees human beings who are lonely in the world, but they are less lonely here.

For an instant, Blaine sees a flicker of his own impossible future. It's a future for one to stumble into while blind, perhaps. Or a future for those who give up, not because they're weak, but because they don't know they're allowed to keep breathing.

They're lonely, like him. And just like that, between one step to the side and a swing of his hips, Blaine keeps breathing, and out with his breath goes the nausea in his heart. He's okay. He's going to be okay.

Gratitude floods in where the pain has been. He's grateful for his past with Kurt, all of it, good and bad. And as the DJ cycles into Madonna's "True Blue", Blaine nearly laughs out loud. He's grateful he knows what the real thing—love—feels like, so he knows what doesn't. And he realizes, that for all his telling himself it's time to move on, he's still in love with Kurt. His whole body swells with it, a peculiar joy to realize and accept. He just wants to hold it in his heart, full and true. 

Of course, he doesn't know what will happen with Kurt and Adam, but he has to believe that all the times he and Kurt dreamed together, that those dreams still reside in Kurt's heart too. Their relationship had consequence for them both. Trent smiles more brightly in response to Blaine's elevating mood, and Blaine takes Trent's hand and spins him. 

Sebastian joins them sporting the red bruise of a fresh hickey just above the line of his collar. His smile is sharp and satisfied, and Blaine finds no judgment in his heart, for Sebastian is just another lonely boy. 

The magic of Scandals flickers within him and around him again, as he lets the music move into his body, and he moves within its thrall. Andy Bell sings of being let go and of going on while still lost in love, and Blaine breathes and tips his head back to the glittering light falling around them. He knows men are looking at them—looking at _him_ , and they are enjoying looking at him, and that's enough. He can give this much of himself to the crowd, but there's nothing else here he wants to take home with him tonight.

.

No one is waiting up for him when he gets home several minutes past his curfew. Blaine heads straight to the shower and then to bed. In the dark he gropes for the end of his phone charger, to plug his phone in for the night. It blinks with a new text notification. Ten minutes old, it's from Kurt. Blaine hesitates before opening it. 

"Are you awake?" it reads.

Blaine takes a deep, painless breath and then exhales all of it. He types back, "Yes."


	9. The Search for Dry Wood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 4x06 "Glease". Kurt hopes to find some insight when he goes back to McKinley for the Grease production. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #9 Ice.
> 
> Title from the lyrics of Sting's "The Hounds of Winter"

**November 2012**

It's the first time Kurt has set foot in William H. McKinley High School since he got on an airplane in September. Just over two months have passed since, and it feels like years have slipped by. The high school at night surrounds him with its strange after-dark energy. Without the sunlight and bustle and open classroom doors, the quality of the evening's chilled air holds sounds differently: more quietly, more carefully. Traces of PTA nights and every other production the glee club has done linger, both in the halls and in his recollection. But specific memories remain insubstantial echoes, half-forgotten emotions that elude his focus when he tries to resolve them. He feels terribly _old_. It's not how he expected to feel.

Rachel has come with him, and he's grateful for that. Her determinedly cheerful chatter about limiting their autographs, about their assured local celebrity status is comforting. She's as nervous as he is. He smiles and nods and indulges the fantasy with her. 

As they turn a corner, their reflection in the night blackened window at the end of the hall startles him. Rachel's kohl ringed eyes and glamorous big city hair jar with the tentative wisps of unconscious retrospection. There's himself beside her, too, just as alien to these halls now: taller, thinner, and paler; and solemn through his smile. He looks like a ghost with his white carved face floating luminous above his dark, layered clothing. A regretful spirit come to haunt the halls, seeking a final resolution to his time here.

He spots his old locker, and one memory comes into focus, sharp and irrepressible in his lungs.

_("I love your jauntily placed cap, it's very Russian czar.")_

The awkwardly sincere compliment, a flirtatious and bold text, an erotic proposition in a steady heated gaze—

_("Come on, let's blow it off.")_

The weight of time together coming to an end (and what an end it has come to), even though, at the time, Kurt had thought he and Blaine had discovered a new beginning together. Kurt struggles to breathe as loss pierces his heart. He makes himself push aside the cruel irony of hindsight, and he withdraws a cold hand from his pocket, gestures toward the locker, forces a grin to crack his frozen cheeks, and speaks to draw Rachel's attention. A silly drawl and a wry smile summon a friendly, shared nostalgia.

Then, Mercedes' voice from down the hall brings other memories, poignant still, but happier. She takes them backstage.

.

Hushed, hypo-mania surges backstage, an electric charge to the air that raises the hair on Kurt's arms. The well-rehearsed activity and coordinated motion all push on the verge of chaos without falling into it. And the scent of it, backstage at McKinley, is an undefinable and specific melange of materials, people, and props, it takes him back, effortlessly, to this time last year. It recalls the particular mental flavors of autumn and anticipation, of navigating new roles and modifying his expectations—and not just on stage. But the important moments, a lot of them were here.

The flashback comes to him, warm with the affection embedded in the memory.

_("Just like the song?"_

_"Just like the song.")_

And he remembers the trembling, tentative step he took. A step taken in faith, not surety. 

_("... I want to go to your house.")_

Unguarded within the reminiscence, Kurt is smiling still when, dressed all in white, Blaine approaches. His sweater sparkles with motes of silver beneath the low light of backstage; Tina had told them Blaine was playing Teen Angel. 

Kurt looks at Blaine—it's what he came for, to look and try to _see_ —but it pains his eyes. His smile slips, and he casts his gaze down. The warmth of his heart grows confused and dwindles. Blaine is too bright, unreal when laid over the subdued tones of Kurt's memory. 

His handsome face is cautiously surprised, and there's an unmistakeable—if tattered—hope in his gaze. But instead of the understanding Kurt hoped to feel upon seeing Blaine again, splinters of ice crystallize in his blood. Kurt hears, reverberating in his head, all of the apologies that have vibrated his phone these past weeks, the ones he read, imagined in the same gentle timbre that's speaking to him now: "I didn't think I'd see you this weekend." Empty words spoken in a voice he used to believe; this is impossible.

In Kurt's peripheral vision, Blaine is both familiar and strange, flickering between recall and reality. Quick glances show him uncertain and afraid, and also—as they linger and Finn comes in—increasingly disappointed and hurting. It makes little sense for Blaine to be the one to fear or the one with wounds to soothe. He's the one who left Kurt, who broke faith, who violated the most sacred things between them. Kurt can't look back up or speak. And so, Blaine hesitates, and then he leaves. 

It drags and pulls at Kurt's insides as Blaine goes, as if there's a loose thread from Kurt that's become snagged on Blaine, and he's unraveling Kurt as he retreats. Kurt feels it—painfully viscerally—all the careful repairs he's made to himself, to his heart; they're coming undone. He doesn't know how to cut the thread before all his seams and hems are ragged and falling apart. If he could just reach out and catch it in his hand, maybe he could hold on and not let slip anymore stitches.

Kurt clenches a fist around nothing, and locks his knees. "You were right," he tells Rachel. "It was a mistake to come." The fibers of his heart run like a fast unwinding knit.

.

From the audience, he can look with dispassion. Performing, Blaine is remote. Kurt feels nothing but the ache of cold burning his heart. There's no heat within him when he looks at Blaine, just more confusion, growing disconnection, and pain.

Blaine catches him looking. Falters. Kurt tries to understand, but he keeps wondering: _'Who are you?'_

When the only answer Kurt can find for himself is, _'I don't know,'_ he decides, maybe, it doesn't matter any more. The question itself isn't worth asking; there's not any answer he could believe. A million more apologies wouldn't make Blaine back into the boy he once knew. There's nothing left here for him. It's time to go.

.

After the play, in the hall, as he and Rachel prepare to leave, Blaine walks right up to him. Determination strengthens his voice: "Kurt, I need to talk to you." 

This time, Kurt makes himself look directly at Blaine, because he knows now there's nothing more to fear here. It's still hard to look. There's a reflexive burst of warmth, that bends his lips for an instant, before regret sinks it down into sadness and his vision blurs. Blaine is a stranger, and they are lost; there's nothing for him to say, nothing for Kurt to hear here except the old echoes.

_("For someone who loves clothes so much, I can't believe you haven't noticed I'm not in my Warbler outfit.")_

"I'm not interested," Kurt says, and he turns away before the tears of bitter resignation can fall.

Behind him Blaine follows. "I never told you about what happened. The guy I hooked up with, I need you to know everyth—"

Blaine's persistence rouses some clarity; a rush of icy fury turns Kurt on his heel. "What are you going to tell me?" Kurt demands. He looks Blaine full in the face and offers up every possible excuse Blaine could give him so Blaine will know: none of them could possibly matter.

Shocked into silence, Blaine stands there, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Kurt can see how his words have laid Blaine open, and Blaine's almost childlike in his vulnerability. And that—Blaine's unfailing trust—is unexpectedly, heart-breakingly familiar. It's a strong, terrifying pull on every memory that still connects them. It may not be enough to change things, but it does stay Kurt's next, harsher words. They diminish and die in Kurt's throat, and Kurt realizes, he's not the ghost here, Blaine is. Unfortunately, whatever absolution Blaine seeks, he's not getting it from Kurt. If Blaine still trusts him, then this much should be obvious: "Relationships are about trust," Kurt says. 

But Blaine still looks at him with stunned incredulity, so Kurt snaps the thread. "I don't trust you anymore."


	10. Throw Me Tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set between 4x22 "All of Nothing" and 5x01 "Love, Love, Love". The pieces are coming together for Blaine, and he's ready. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #10 Jigsaw.
> 
> Title from the lyrics to David Bowie's "Thursday's Child"

**Spring 2013**

Kurt's waiting by a tree on the sidewalk outside Breadstix as Blaine exits the restaurant. Blaine, having been caught in one last congratulatory group hug with Sam and Ryder and Tina and Marley, says his farewells again to his friends—and to Mr. Schuester and Miss Pills— the new Mrs. Schuester. He meets Kurt's patient attention and smiles while fishing his keys from his pocket. He's parked close by, and he'd promised Kurt a ride home. Blaine presses the remote to unlock the car with a flash of its lights and a welcoming ding. Kurt returns Blaine's smile and reaches a hand out to him. Their hands find each other easily and without thought, and they walk to Blaine's car together.

The ring is in Blaine's bag, as it has been since he bought it. He's been trying to put the pieces together, to find the right time, the right way. It feels like they're so close. The warmth and easiness of Kurt from the night they spent together has remained between them. Last Friday, they'd stayed up past dawn, fucking, talking, then making love, and talking more, laughing, playing. And then, as morning approached, sleepless and still helplessly caught in each other's orbits, they went downstairs. Kurt made coffee. Together, tucked under a blanket, they sat outside on the patio with their mugs and watched the sun rise. They talked about when Blaine would be in New York, Kurt held his hand, and Blaine could still feel how deeply Kurt had been inside his body. In that moment, they were like boyfriends again, dreaming a future together. Not an entire life—no further than a few months or a year, but it was precious and true.

That was when Blaine knew he should buy the ring for Kurt. Whether Burt approved or not, Blaine understood he couldn't simply wait for True Love to magically bring him and Kurt back to one another. He had to be active and work the magic himself, had to keep asking Kurt, had to keep listening to him and telling him his own answers; he had to be certain Kurt knew how he felt, that they still wanted the same things, and Blaine was ready now for all the things he hadn't been then. They had waited long enough; sometimes it felt like they'd been waiting lifetimes. He wouldn't make either of them wait any longer than they had to.

But then, with Jan and Liz, Kurt had said, "Oh, we're not a couple," and Blaine knew it wasn't time yet. Not quite. It still felt close. It feels closer and closer yet as they walk down the rank of cars in the mall parking lot, hand in hand, as if their hands should always be thus, comfortable and steady and warm together.

In the car, as Blaine's pulling into the sparse traffic, Kurt speaks. "Do you think they'll be happy?" he asks. 

Blaine spares a glance as he straightens the car and accelerates. Kurt is thoughtful, leaning his head back and gazing out the window. His fingers rub against the armrest between them, as if seeking some kinder texture than what they're finding. 

"Oh, well, um," Blaine says, and turns his attention back to the road. "That's up to them, don't you think?"

"Maybe," Kurt says with a wistful sigh.

"Maybe?" Blaine prompts. Catches Kurt's wry smile in his peripheral vision and wonders what it means.

"Do you think people can choose to be happy? Or is it just circumstance and personality and, I don't know, luck of the draw..." Kurt shrugs.

"In general or in relationships?"

"Both."

It's a big question, especially after the last several months. The year has been hard on Kurt, hard on himself too. But Blaine doesn't feel unhappy any longer. He wakes looking forward to his days. Things are missing still, but he's putting the pieces back together, making choices that bring him closer to his goals. But he knows it hasn't been like that for Kurt. The mistakes Blaine made, his father's illness, these aren't things Kurt could control, and no matter how well work and school have gone, they haven't made up for the things Kurt lost. And even with his father's health restored and the potential of their relationship renewed, Blaine knows that doesn't erase the emotional hardship. He knows Kurt's tired.

"I guess," Blaine starts slowly, stalling a little bit as he gathers words. "It depends on how a person defines happiness? But I think it's all of the above. Luck and circumstance matter, but we still have choices."

"To a point," Kurt says, and chews his lip. "We can't choose our feelings, can we?"

That seems a rather overloaded question. Blaine pulls to a stop at a red light and turns to look at Kurt. He won't try to read anything into Kurt's words beyond what Kurt's asking him. "The big feelings? No, we don't choose those. We can accept them or try to deny them, but they are what they are—we are who we are."

"It's hard," Kurt says. "Sometimes." His gaze is solemn and bright, and terribly open.

Blaine drops his hand from the steering wheel to cover Kurt's nearest hand. "I know," he says. Kurt turns his hand beneath Blaine's, palm up, and squeezes before letting Blaine retrieve his hand when the light turns green.

They fall into silence after that, and Blaine doesn't press Kurt to talk more. He's gone back to a thoughtful mien as he reaches for the car stereo and finds some music to lull them on their way.

.

It's another twenty minutes, give or take, to Kurt's darkened house, and it's well past midnight when Blaine pulls into the driveway. Kurt no longer has a curfew, and Blaine's parents have let him have more flexibility with his own. He texted his mother from the restaurant and told her not to wait up for him. He's not ready to say good night to Kurt, so when Kurt turns to him with another question in his gaze, Blaine turns back and waits for Kurt to ask it. His hand goes to the ignition, poised to turn the engine off.

But Kurt doesn't ask him anything, not with words. He leans over and brings a hand to Blaine's shoulder, urging him closer and Blaine hears the click of Kurt's seat belt releasing, and then Kurt's shifting near, and Blaine keys off the car, undoes his own seat belt, and moves to meet Kurt, grateful there's no gear stick between them, just the low padded armrest.

Kurt kisses him, soft and full of breath. The warmth of Kurt's mouth and the feel of his lips, smooth and completely certain, has Blaine reaching for Kurt's face, angling his jaw, coaxing him open, and drawing him into a deeper kiss. 

"Would you touch me?" Kurt murmurs when Blaine eases up to breathe.

"Yeah," Blaine says, and pushes back into Kurt's mouth as he drops a hand to Kurt's waist. Maybe he should ask if Kurt wants to go in, take this to his old bedroom, but he suspects, given the strange, unnameable status of their relationship, Kurt's not going to want to wake up the house to take Blaine to bed. So here will have to do; they have enough privacy at this hour. 

It's familiar enough work for his hands, undoing Kurt's trousers and reaching into his fly, finding him hard and hot, pulsing eagerly into the curl of Blaine's fingers. 

"God," Kurt whispers, and his head lolls back as Blaine pulls up along silken skin. 

Blaine kisses his throat and asks, "May I blow you?"

"Uh huh," Kurt replies with a pleasant shudder.

Then it's awkward. Blaine has to get his knees up on the seat to bend over the console to get at Kurt, and Kurt pushes his seat back and leans against the door, unbuttoning his waistcoat and shirt to give Blaine fewer obstacles. And Blaine wants to make this good for Kurt, even if it's to be a clandestine blowjob given in the car. Blaine presses a kiss low on Kurt's belly and strokes his shaft with a loose hand. He nuzzles lower, exhales and inhales deeply. The scent of Kurt, so intimate and specific here, fills his lungs and makes his head swim. It's always, always like something half-forgotten, now wonderfully recalled. Kurt fills his nose with sex-sweet fragrance: dense arousal and clean sweat and it's like nothing other than Kurt.

"Sweetheart," Blaine murmurs, and tugs at Kurt's fly, tries to find more space, more skin. Kurt helps, but it's still less than Blaine wants, but he takes what he can—and gives all he's able. Sucks Kurt into his mouth with a moan he cannot withhold, while his thumbs stroke down beneath the stretched band of Kurt's underwear.

Above him Kurt grunts and sighs and one hand pushes into Blaine's hair, breaking the hold of product to take a fistful. The tug of Kurt's hand in his hair, tight, right on the edge of hurting but not quite, tingles across Blaine's scalp and down his spine, burrows deep into the heat blooming in his belly. Eagerly, Blaine finds a rhythm for his lips and tongue, steady, but not too fast, the way he knows Kurt likes it best. 

"That's it," Kurt gasps out, "oh, god, Blaine, that's it."

Blaine hums and squeezes at Kurt's hip, but he doesn't falter.

"Fucking perfect," Kurt says, and Blaine thrills at the grit in his voice as much as the praise, the breathless rasp of it. Loves how he affects Kurt, loves what it means between them—still and, he hopes, always. Tries to take more of Kurt into his mouth, as much as he can, wants to take him as deep as possible, wants so much, the heaviness of Kurt filling him up, the taste and scent of him, the urgency of his touch, the restless shifting of his hips. The creak of the car seat protests their activity.

"Oh, honey, I'm so close," Kurt says, giving Blaine a scant few seconds warning before he comes. Blaine pulls back to catch it all on his tongue.

He's barely had a chance to swallow a second time before Kurt's pulling him up for a kiss. "That was, mmm," Kurt hums into another kiss, and then, once he's caught his breath, "Let me return the favor?" he asks, hot breath against Blaine's cheek.

"You don't have to," Blaine says as he smooths his hands down Kurt's shoulders and gives a reassuring kiss to the corner of Kurt's mouth. "I'll take care of myself at home."

Kurt shakes his head. "No, I'm not sending you off to drive all that way so unsatisfied," Kurt says, and his hands are already fumbling at Blaine's clothing, undoing his cardigan. "So let me, please? I really want to, Blaine."

"Anything for you," Blaine says.

And Kurt snorts a sudden laugh. "You're so selfless."

Blaine's answering laughter only lasts until Kurt's got his pants open and is pushing him back with such hot intention in his gaze and a delightful wickedness in his smile, Blaine loses his breath altogether. "Okay," he manages, and gives himself over to Kurt's hands and mouth.

And, god, his _mouth_ , hot and wet and opening so generously around Blaine, sliding down snug and slick and knowing. There's something else, too, something urgent, like Kurt's hands were in his hair, something hungry and seeking, and Blaine knows, with the tight pull of suction and how swiftly Kurt is picking up speed, that this is going to be quick and dirty—and utterly fantastic. 

Finesse is not Kurt's aim; it's messy and loud and borderline gluttonous. He sucks Blaine with such hedonistic indulgence, moaning and swallowing all around him, and Blaine can do nothing but succumb to it. It feels like Kurt's forcefully sucking his orgasm right up from his balls, irresistible. 

"I love you," Blaine whispers right before he lurches helplessly into his climax. Kurt keeps at him, not letting up on the suction even as he slows. He stays down, his mouth only gradually softening around Blaine, humming contentedly and exchanging the insistent pull of his mouth with the more tender caress of his tongue.

Blaine shivers and pets clumsily at Kurt's shoulders. "That's, oh..." His cock twitches feebly, and Kurt finally lifts his head. 

Kurt crawls up and gets closer somehow, manages to pull Blaine into something of an embrace. "Me too, you know," he says.

With a smile, Blaine rubs his nose into the sweaty hair at Kurt's temple. "I do know." He lets his eyes slip closed for a few heartbeats, just enjoys the feel of Kurt in his arms, lax and warm in the afterglow. Such as it is. 

Kurt squirms closer and sighs. His hand finds Blaine's and interleaves their fingers loosely. "I'm glad," Kurt says.

"So are you sure we're not a couple?" Blaine asks, affectionate and teasing more than anything.

But then, Kurt grins against his cheek, and, "No," he says so softly, softly enough Blaine isn't sure he even heard the word correctly. And if he did, then... Then?

Then Kurt pulls back to meet Blaine's gaze more seriously, but still warm and smiling. And though Blaine knows this is neither the time nor the place for this conversation, Kurt's next words surprise him even more. "You should ask me that again before I go back to New York."

"Oh," Blaine says, stunned, pleasantly so, with a smile stretching his lips. "I will."

Kurt bites self-consciously into his bottom lip. "I guess... I should go, then," Kurt says, pulling away reluctantly, but there's light in his eyes, and the promise of an answer to be given later.

"Yeah," Blaine says, blinks at him, trying to memorize everything about Kurt in this moment of candid confession. "It's late."

"I'll call you tomorrow, okay?" Kurt says, and he starts buttoning up his shirt. 

Blaine nods, and reaches for Kurt's hand, interrupts the work of his fingers, to hold on, one last time before they part. Too many words crowd up on his tongue, and all he manages for right now is, "I had a good time tonight, thank you." 

"Well, it's a tradition now, isn't it?" Kurt says, lifts a shoulder in airy and artful glibness. "A hook up in your car at Mr. Schuester and Miss Pillsbury's wedding."

"I guess so," Blaine says, and he does up his pants, doesn't worry too much about the rest of his dishevelment. "Lucky for us they did it twice."

Kurt laughs and resumes straightening his clothes back to perfection. "Maybe you're right," he says, while looking down at his hands as he tucks his shirt in.

"Hmm? About?"

"That it's up to them. We all have choices we can make, to try to find our own happiness." Kurt looks up to meet Blaine's gaze. "In accord with our feelings."

They're so close to it, and it feels like a precipice, but one Blaine is absolutely ready for. "Kurt?" Blaine says. He desperately wants to Kurt to know how ready he is, but he can't untangle his words from his fluttering heartbeat, and it's no more the right place or time now than it was ten minutes ago.

"Ask me again, Blaine? Not now, I'm still—" Kurt breaks off with a gesture at himself, waving between his head and heart. "But please, ask me again soon." Then Kurt pops the car door open beside him.

Even though Blaine knows the question Kurt is asking him for is not the same question Blaine has had restlessly hanging on the back of his tongue all week, it's all part of the same truth for them. "I promise, I will," he says. "I will."


	11. Can't Run from Myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set the morning after "So Many Riches", between 4x21 "Wonder-ful" and 4x22 "All or Nothing". The morning after spending the night with Blaine, Kurt has a conversation with his father that helps him reframe his ambivalence toward a relationship with Blaine. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #11 Key.
> 
> Title from Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing"

**Spring 2013**

Dew glimmers silver upon the grass, and cool humidity gentles the crispness of the Spring morning. Blaine's mouth tastes faintly of coffee. Along the fence the orange daylilies have just begun to unfurl, and finches chirp and chatter among the trees. Kurt draws away from kissing Blaine to breathe. Under the blanket they share, he's growing hot despite the fresh morning chill, and so is Blaine. The sky glows a pale straw gold beyond the rooftop of their back neighbor, and pale azure above. Blaine's eyelashes flutter open. The sun is above the horizon; they watched it rise together.

"Should we take this back inside?" Blaine asks, low and cracking over a faint whisper. Beneath the steady warmth of Blaine's gaze, Kurt's heartbeat matches the flutter of Blaine's eyelashes. In Blaine's eyes, there are questions that beckon to Kurt still, with a persistent urgency, even though they have glutted themselves upon one another all night. 

Kurt hasn't got enough answers within him for all the questions Blaine has for him. But here, like this, after everything, he feels profoundly safe, peaceful, and centered in the moment. He can answer some of them. So Kurt strokes smooth a stiff curl above Blaine's ear, and holds himself easy within the immediate embrace of Blaine's affection. Then he replies, "Yeah."

.

Inside, they don't make it very far. Their coffee cups clunk into the sink, and their blanket slips from Kurt's shoulders to the kitchen floor. Kurt follows it down, and tugs on Blaine's hands to bring him with him. The blanket offers little padding, but the unyielding tile is nothing compared to having Blaine in his arms: his mouth moving, tender and hungry, with his own; Blaine's hands slipping under his t-shirt to splay hot across his skin; and his body, lean and gorgeous, moving with such intention against his own.

"Here?" Blaine asks between kisses.

"Yes... ooh," Kurt replies. "I just want..."

Blaine's response is a deep hum and to push the waistband of Kurt's briefs down.

.

They're like that, t-shirts rucked up and underwear around their thighs, on the kitchen floor, when Kurt hears the vibration of the garage door. 

"Shit," he says, and sits up so fast, he knocks his forehead against Blaine's. 

"Ow," Blaine says, scrambling to haul up his briefs. 

There's no way to salvage the situation, really; Kurt can only minimize the damage and embarrassment. At least they make it off the floor. Blaine's wrapping the blanket around himself and giving Kurt a concerned look, while Kurt grabs the dishtowel to casually hold in front of himself and puts the island between him and the door about to open. He hears his Dad and Carole laughing on the other side of it, and then it opens, and they come into the kitchen from the short back hall.

"Hi!" Kurt says, far too brightly and forcing a smile. "We weren't expecting you back so soon."

Carole glances down with a grin and his Dad's eyebrows rise. "Carole has to get ready for work."

"I'm, um, just going to go use the shower? Quickly?" Blaine says.

"Sure!" Kurt says, and watches Blaine leave the kitchen. Then he turns back to his Dad and Carole, determined in his cheerful nonchalance. "I was going to make breakfast. Have you guys eaten?"

"We're fine," his Dad says. "We ate at the hotel. Why don't you go get dressed, Kurt."

.

Blaine doesn't stay for breakfast. Standing in the driveway by Blaine's Prius, Kurt apologizes to him for the abrupt interruption, and then he hugs him. 

Blaine stifles a yawn against Kurt's shoulder. "I'll call you tonight?"

"Please do," Kurt says. 

.

No one's downstairs when Kurt goes back into the house, so he returns to the kitchen to get breakfast for himself. He's whisking some eggs for an omelet when his Dad comes in. There's no preamble from his father, just a direct question, "So, you going tell me what's going on with you and Blaine?" It's a relief, having his Dad, not only in the clear from the doctors, but also wholly back to himself, carrying on like there's barely been a hiccup. Even so, Kurt doesn't welcome the question. He hadn't intended anyone to know.

"There's nothi—" Kurt breaks off the reflexive denial and closes his eyes for a few breaths, lets the whisk fall still.

"You're not back together then, I take it," his Dad says. 

Kurt opens his eyes and shakes his head. "No. We're just enjoying each other's company," he says.

"Evidently," his Dad says, and the skeptical sarcasm in his tone has Kurt frowning.

Kurt glances back over his shoulder. "What?"

"Kurt," his Dad says, and then he pulls out one of the stools by the island and sits with a heavy sigh. "You've got to know how he feels about you."

Kurt presses his lips together and nods. It feels like his heart can't beat around the fullness in his chest. He turns his attention back to the bowl of beaten eggs and exhales a soft, "I do."

"And how do you feel about him? It's not like you to use—"

"I'm _not_ using him," Kurt bites back, snippier than he intends to be, and shoots a glare at his Dad. "Blaine knows that."

"Okay," his Dad says raising his hands to forfend Kurt's defensiveness. "It's okay, you know what I mean."

Kurt releases the whisk and softens his tone before he continues. "It's just complicated," he says.

"Your feelings about Blaine?" his Dad asks.

With a shake of his head, Kurt turns around and leans back against the edge of the counter. "I know how I feel about him," Kurt says, "What I don't know is how I feel about being in a relationship with him again."

"Well," his Dad says, "from where I'm sitting, it looks like you are already."

"We're not."

"So what's the difference?" his Dad asks.

"What do you mean?"

His Dad raises an eyebrow; it's the look that means, _'stop being so deliberately obtuse, Kurt,'_ and then he says, "Between whatever you guys are doing now and being in a relationship."

"We're friends." Kurt says simply, and—he hopes—firmly enough for his Dad to accept.

But his father isn't dissuaded. "Yeah, and?"

Kurt rolls his eyes. "Do I really have to say it?"

"I think maybe you do."

" _Dad_ ," Kurt half-turns back toward the counter and fidgets with the handle of the whisk.

"Okay, look, if you can't own up to what you're doing with Blaine, then, to me that indicates you're not proud of yourself for what you're doing. You know how easily you could hurt him, Kurt. And I know you're not a vengeful person. You don't hold grudges."

"I definitely don't want to hurt him," Kurt says. "And I don't plan to."

"Well, you're going to, if you can't figure out what you want from him and be honest with both of you."

Kurt sighs and his shoulder slump. He drops the whisk back into the bowl. "I am being honest, but the truth is complicated."

His Dad leans forward, resting on his elbows. "Break it down then. What do you want?"

Kurt has to smile at that. It's how his Dad would walk him through problems when he was young. "I want what we had. Before."

"You're never going to have that again," his Dad says, and that's just as it was when Kurt was young too; his Dad doesn't spare him the difficult truths. 

"I know, I just... I miss him, Dad, so much. All the time, every day. I just want to be with him again."

"All right, so what are you afraid of?"

"That... if he cheats again, I won't be able to forgive him a second time. I won't be able to survive it, emotionally."

"That's a reasonable fear."

"So if we can just keep things like this, best friends who sometimes..." Kurt pauses to give his Dad a wry smile. "... enjoy each other's company, then he can't cheat on me again, so I'll never have to forgive him again, and maybe we can be okay like that."

"You won't be," his Dad says, and it sounds like a strange and serious prophecy. "You're lying to yourself if you think you can be."

"Why? Why can't it work like this?"

"Because it's less than both of you want, you're going to be trying to get more from him than you're giving back, and knowing Blaine, he'll keep giving it until you both end up so badly hurt you'll lose each other entirely."

"I would never do that to him."

"Not on purpose," his Dad says. "You'd never hurt him on purpose, I know that, but that doesn't mean you won't. Or that you can't."

Kurt casts his gaze at the floor. "You make me sound like a terrible person."

"You're not," his Dad says gently, "but Blaine is vulnerable to you in a way I don't think you fully understand."

That's probably true enough. "So what should I do?"

"I can't tell you that, but I think you know that leaving Blaine holding on to some kind of false hope is not a kind thing for you to do."

"But it's not false," Kurt says, rubbing his hands over his face and feeling the disorientation of the sleepless night sink a heavy confusion into his head. "I'm trying to figure this out. If I can let myself trust him again."

"Okay," his Dad says. "Then you got to figure out what it means to trust him."

That one's easy to answer: "Trusting him means knowing he will never, ever cheat on me again."

His Dad's smile is sad and affectionately amused. "Oh, Kurt, that's not what it means."

Kurt's hands fall from his face, and he blinks at his Dad.

"Trust is about having faith when you _don't_ know for sure," his Dad says. 

But Kurt's never had much time for belief without evidence. "Faith in what exactly?"

"That, as two fallible human beings who love each other, you recognize there will be times you make mistakes, even hurt each other—even when you don't mean to—and there'll be times that are going to be real tough, but you believe in yourselves and each other to get through those hurts and tough times, together. Trust doesn't mean bad things won't happen or neither of you will screw up. It means putting your faith in each other to do your best and figure it out together. You have to trust yourself as much as you trust him."

Kurt folds his arms across his chest and drops his chin to his chest. He lets his Dad's words settle in his mind. His understanding morphs as he thinks on them. Understands how Blaine didn't really trust him back in October. Understands, too, how Blaine is trusting him now—through last night and everything they shared, even in the absence of Kurt being sure about very much. Blaine is so sure of himself, of Kurt, of _them_. He has been since Valentine's Day. 

And Kurt realizes, in a sudden, light-headed rush, Blaine trusts himself now too, in a way he hadn't before they broke up. Blaine trusts himself not to cheat again, and so maybe Kurt may let himself trust that, too. Have faith in Blaine and his own self-knowledge, his intentions and his love. Kurt knows well that Blaine's infidelity hurt them both equally badly. Neither of them would choose to go through it again. And somehow... 

It's not even that Kurt lacks evidence for a belief in Blaine's future fidelity, but the logic of it is still hard to work through, because he keeps demanding a simple yes or no answer to the question of: will Blaine cheat again? He doesn't know the answer; he can't—and neither can Blaine. And maybe, at its foundation, trust isn't entirely rational, and the reason Kurt cannot find any clear logic to follow is because there is none. It's fundamentally emotional, and if he trusts Blaine, then he has to accept the unknowable risk of it. The emotional truth remains: "I do love him," Kurt says. "More than anything. I never stopped."

"Yeah," his Dad says with a small smile.

"Is that enough?" Kurt asks him. "For all the rest?"

"That's up to you," his Dad says.


	12. Like All Dreamers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 4x14 "I Do". Blaine realizes Kurt still trusts him, at least this much. It's a start. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #12 Loft.
> 
> Title from the lyrics to Duran Duran's "Save a Prayer"

**February 2013**

Blaine stands near the punchbowl; it's where Kurt left him. Kurt's gone somewhere, excused himself some twenty minutes ago, but he said he'd be back soon. Asked Blaine to wait for him. Scattered heart-shaped confetti glitters pink on the beige patterned carpet beneath his feet: escapees from the earlier spill over the dance floor. Idly, Blaine sweeps the toe of his shoe across it, making it jump, one tiny heart sticks to the black leather. 

The reception playlist is full of memories that don't feel entirely like his own, songs from when Mr. Schue and Miss Pillsbury were his age, but he knows them all. He's always loved the music from that time of strange sharpened fears and fragments of wild joy, like the terrible weight of one enhanced the other, made people more desperate to drown in the moments that shone so brightly. 

Over the speakers, Simon Le Bon croons, _"All alone ain't much fun  
So you're looking for the thrill."_

This one is a vivid burst of his own actual memory, sticky summer afternoons in the cul-de-sac, singing a song about a one night stand with his brother. He loved the song—had no idea what it was about at the time—but Cooper enjoyed how the girls of the neighborhood would flock to their performances. He remembers Cooper chiding him, "Come on, Squirt! Simon Le Bon was doing television commercials when he was your age. Smile! See how much they love you when you smile?" He'd been six at the time.

Blaine takes a sip of punch to break the catch of emotion in his throat.

Tina is dancing with Mike, Sam with Brittany. Other couples hold each other close, move together slowly in the spiraling melody of the music. The ache lodged in Blaine's chest is only partly loneliness, only partly spawned by old memory. More of it is bound in the present, more immediate pangs of the unexpected (but perhaps no less ephemeral than the song reflects) intimacy he and Kurt have shared today. That memory is fresh: Kurt kissing him in the car, the way Kurt had looked at him, and the things Kurt had said. Singing with Kurt tonight, too, all the space and hurt between them had floated away. Everything felt possible again on that stage.

 _"You don't have to dream it all, just live a day,"_ the song tells him.

Blaine looks down at his cup of punch to keep his smile for himself. They may not be together, but Kurt still wants him. Everything may be impossible, far more than what he may hope for, but there are many degrees of something. And there's a lot of something still between them—possibly even some things that are brand new.

And it's then that Kurt's voice intrudes: "Hey," Kurt says, and Blaine looks up with a rush of heat to his face, as if Kurt's just caught him out and knows what's on his mind.

"Hi," Blaine says with what breath remains in his lungs. It's caught him a hundred different times today, every time he's looked: Kurt is lean, sharp and stunning in his meticulously tailored dinner suit. The drape and glitter of the chain at his throat beckons desire. The grace of his posture, one hand tucked into a trouser pocket, and the set of his shoulders weakens Blaine's knees but strengthens the beat of his heart.

Kurt tilts his head, and there's a gleam in his eyes and a promising kink in his smile when he asks, "Would you care to dance?"

Blaine smiles more brightly than Cooper ever taught him, with all of his heart on display for Kurt, so there can be no doubt: "I'd love to."

Kurt takes his hand and leads him onto the dance floor. Blaine keeps his grip firm around the warmth of Kurt's palm and the strength of his fingers. They weave between couples caught up in each other and the music, and Kurt turns to him. Then Blaine lets go, but only so Kurt may draw him near.

Being near Kurt like this, the whole length of their bodies brushing and sharing their heat as they sway together, the scent of Kurt's cologne, the pale line of his neck, it's a pull on Blaine as fundamental as gravity.

 _"And you wanted to dance so I asked you to dance  
But fear is in your soul,"_ sings Le Bon, and it's so powerful in coincidence, Blaine presses his cheek to Kurt's and says softly, "I'm not afraid." He feels the contraction of muscle that tells him Kurt is smiling, but Kurt doesn't reply, just dances with him.

Eventually, the reception playlist music falls into silence, and Blaine eases himself back half a step to see Finn and Rachel take the stage. They smile at each other, giddy and nervous, almost childlike in their awkward and earnest affection. 

The piano starts, a resigned heaviness underlies a melancholy longing. Finn begins the song:

_"I know it's late, I know you're weary.  
I know your plans don't include me."_

Kurt hasn't let go of his hand, pulls him closer again, back into his arms, even as Blaine wonders at the apparent theme of the evening. It reveals itself to him as if by design—as if the universe itself is urging him onward. How can it feel so perfectly inevitable that he be exactly here in Kurt's arms just like this? The promise of them yet finding some respite and pleasure together rises in warm eddies beneath his skin. The possibility of a new beginning stubbornly lingers, a bright flash of hope aflutter in his chest.

He doesn't resist it. Slowly they move together, and slowly they come together, until Blaine's head rests upon Kurt's shoulder, Kurt's hands on the back of Blaine's ribs keep them pressed close, and Blaine can feel the response of both their bodies, and they are in accord. He turns his face toward Kurt's neck and inhales, exhales, closes his eyes, moves with Kurt, feels the heat between them intensify, feels how they both want. 

Lifts his head to murmur softly near Kurt's ear. "I know we're not together, but whatever else we are, I'm still yours." He doesn't have to add, _If you want me,_ because he knows Kurt does. Kurt _does_ , and that's a glorious truth to hold. 

Kurt's reply is a tightening of his arms around Blaine, and then he says, quietly but clearly, "I got us a room."

It's an echo of last Valentine's Day, another invocation of memory. Does Kurt intend it to be so? Blaine has to shut his eyes, center himself within Kurt's embrace before he can reply: "Let's go." 

.

In the soft colors and warm light of the hotel room, the grip Kurt has on his tie keeps Blaine's lips pressed fast to Kurt's. Kurt's knuckles push the knot against the base of Blaine's throat, a tantalizing pressure that tangles around the root of his tongue, seems to hold it immobile. But Blaine has to speak to ask Kurt. He turns his head to free his mouth, drags his lips along Kurt's jawline, and Kurt's grip loosens, permits Blaine's movement. The not-quite stubble beneath Kurt's skin abrades his lips, makes them tingle. He wants to know if Kurt's thinking about it, wants Kurt to know he is. "Do you remember last Valentine's Day?" he asks, trailing soft breath against the fine texture of Kurt's throat. After everything, he still smells like home. Blaine presses his lips to the tender skin, kisses Kurt's pulse, drags his lips to the most sensitive places he knows, lingers in the dip below Kurt's ear, behind his jaw. Hooks his index and middle fingers in the loose chain on Kurt's bowtie. Tugs.

He feels the muscles contract in Kurt's throat, a reflexive spasm as his breath stops. Blaine lifts his head and dares to look. Kurt's looking right back at him. Below heavy eyelids, his gaze is deep with longing and memory. 

"I remember," Kurt whispers, and there's a wisp of apprehension unmistakable in the quiet syllables.

Blaine smiles and slides his other hand along Kurt's jaw until his fingers are pushing into Kurt's hair behind his ear. "Me too," he says. _Don't be afraid_ , he wants to say. _You're so safe with me._ Kurt's gaze is growing unfocused, and Blaine wants to give Kurt everything he wants.

"Are you—?" Kurt starts and his breath falls away in a rush as he leans into Blaine's hand. "Is that what you want?" he asks. "Because I don't think I can—"

"No," Blaine says, and lets his fingers slip from the bowtie, to skip down to the buttons of Kurt's shirt, working them loose. "I just want to give you whatever you need. Please let me."

" _Blaine_ ," Kurt pleads, half entreaty, half something else.

"Come to bed with me?"

It's nothing so cliche as a movie scene after that. No trail of their clothes leading to the bed, the result of urgent fumbling desire. Kurt strips the comforter off the bed, folds it, and retrieves from his jacket a three-pack of condoms and a tube of KY, tosses them onto the bed (it was all he could get at the corner 7-11, he says, and that explains the twenty minute absence). Blaine takes Kurt's suit jacket, hangs it beside his in the closet and drapes his dress pants over the back of a chair along with Kurt's. There'll be no Prom: The Morning After wardrobe disaster.

But Blaine's still got his shirt and tie on when Kurt reaches for him and pushes him down to the bed. Blaine is breathless, lying on his back and Kurt is over him, dark-eyed and flushed and wondering. He sees Kurt's lust, and it's been so long and something he feared he wouldn't see again. Always hoped, but didn't dare expect. The naked desire in Kurt's gaze is all for him, all upon him. He sees it, and he wants to feed it in any way he can, wants it to consume him. Blaine says, "Yes" to whatever Kurt is asking. Kurt leans downs and kisses him, loosens his tie, unbuttons his shirt, pushes up his undershirt and kisses his chest, makes Blaine moan. 

Kurt is quiet in a way he rarely has been in the past, and there's something clumsy and rough in the work of his hands, as if he's trying to be more gentle, but he doesn't remember Blaine's body entirely. He's all tight grips, sudden movement, and heavy hot gaze.

Blaine helps Kurt out of his shirt and undershirt, marvels at what just a month of NYADA dance class has done for Kurt's torso, lays an admiring hand upon Kurt's flat belly. "You look good," Blaine says, lets his fingers trip down to the waistband of Kurt's boxer briefs.

Quick smile, only a little bit self-conscious. "So do you," Kurt says, and then he's shifting his weight down again, kissing Blaine deeply, and grinding his pelvis against Blaine's.

The desire Blaine's kept so carefully wrapped up like a jagged edged stone in his chest, he lets it soften and expand, blossom as the heat of his arousal fills him, and Blaine breathes. He can breathe so easily like this. Kurt's hands on him are like magic, conjuring him back from the grayscale daydreams and fantasies he's been using to sustain himself in Kurt's absence. Kurt's dragging the little multicolored pieces of Blaine's hunger and ache from all the places Blaine's been carefully containing them. It thrills him—a sort of wild and giddy thing to embrace—how Kurt can elicit this much from him, so much, so deftly, and he's so desperate for it, for the relief Kurt gives him.

"What do you want?" he asks Kurt.

With a groan, Kurt shifts again, pushing himself up to straight arms and stilling his hips. "Want to come with you inside me," he says, and then adds, hand pressed to Blaine's chest. "But don't move. I want to take you like this."

"Oh," Blaine says, and he does have to move a little bit as Kurt rolls off him to strip his underpants off. Blaine yanks off his tie, tosses it toward the nightstand, wriggles out of his briefs, and is shrugging off his shirt when Kurt comes back to him, throwing one leg over Blaine's hips and dropping a condom to Blaine's chest while keeping the lube for himself. Blaine tears open the foil square and sheaths his cock in latex. Works his undershirt off over his head and watches Kurt reach back to slick himself up. Blaine watches and relishes the clench of Kurt's jaw, the twitch of muscle in his cheek, the shiver of his eyelashes as he preps himself. 

He rests his hands on Kurt's thighs, rubs up and down the long, hard muscles, but refrains from touching Kurt's balls or cock, though they tempt. Kurt's brow furrows in concentration, and he sighs softly. "I haven't been with anyone else," Kurt says matter of factly. He tips his head back and rocks against his hand. He moves slowly, and reaches for the lube again.

Blaine stops himself from saying anything about Adam. Or asking. He has wondered, and Kurt's telling him now means what exactly? "I haven't either," he offers instead in exchange.

"It'd be okay if you had," Kurt says and his head rolls on his shoulders. He smiles tenderly down at Blaine. "But I'm glad you haven't."

"Me too," Blaine says. "On both counts."

"I'm telling you partly because, it's uh, been a while for me. Since August?"

"I'll go easy on you, I promise."

But Kurt shakes his head. "No. It's not going to be easy. Not tonight."

And what on Earth does that mean? Blaine doesn't get much time to contemplate it, since Kurt's pulling his hand free and reaching for a tissue to clean his fingers, and then he's slicking up Blaine's cock and positioning himself, holding Blaine's dick upright, angling it to press against his slickened hole. And Blaine swallows a whimper at the contact, for the way he feels Kurt's rim flex against him, the little muscle clenching and relaxing against head of his cock as Kurt hangs his head and breathes, deep and even, until the small spasms cease and Kurt can open around him. 

Kurt presses down, crying out softly and grabbing at Blaine's forearms, and he's sinking, taking Blaine into such luxurious, stifling heat. "Oh god," Kurt mumbles, and he shudders hard, and then he pushes himself down more forcefully, the rest of the way, until the intimate connection binds them as completely as it can, and Blaine is consumed. The hot drumming pulse of Kurt's blood surrounds him.

Blaine closes his eyes, and steadies his breath, and he waits for Kurt to move. This is something they haven't done often, Kurt riding, because Kurt often cannot sustain it. Being fucked renders Kurt feeble and uncoordinated—which is endearing and hot and so very flattering—but it means that, in this position, neither of them can simply let go. It won't be easy, and maybe that's why. 

"Oh, sweet fuck," Kurt whispers faintly, dragging himself up a short way, pushing back down, tentatively rolling his hips a little with it. 

The friction and vise-tight grip of Kurt's ass is a brutal pleasure; Blaine only manages a pained sounding groan.

"Okay?" Kurt asks him.

Blaine nods and cracks his eyes open. "Oh, yeah... Jesus, you're perfect."

It's still a little awkward, at first. It's been a while for both of them, and they've done it like this infrequently enough that there's no rhythm or movement to recover, only something better to, hopefully, discover. 

They end up with Blaine holding Kurt's ribs while Kurt's hands take the rest of his weight upon Blaine's shoulders, leaning over Blaine as he lifts himself up and forward with a corkscrew swivel of his hips, so smooth and fluid, like his spine is made of rubber, and then he pushes back sharp and straight.

And that's brilliant, for as long as Kurt can sustain it, but he's soon breathing hard and beginning to lose strength as his own pleasure mounts. When he falters in his struggle, Blaine takes over, feels how Kurt is fumbling and dazed, his eyes glazed bright, his mouth parted as if to speak, but his lips just tremble. His brow creases and he gasps as Blaine pulls him down and holds him flush and snug against him, doesn't let Kurt lift up again immediately. Kurt can seem so untouchable, fierce like he could survive anything. Sometimes Blaine believes it's true. Sometimes he forgets Kurt like this. Naked in his arms, stripped down to tender vulnerability, still, always maybe, a little bit afraid at first, when they make love like this: Blaine inside Kurt. 

And, oh. It hits Blaine in a rush: Kurt still trusts him, at least this much, to surrender himself to Blaine, to trust him enough to touch so deeply.

"Kurt," Blaine says, blinking the burn of perspiration from his eyes. He is still worthy of this, the responsibility of bearing Kurt's fragile heart. And Kurt is looking back at him, wanting, wanting, wanting. More than just the sex? More than the friction and fill of Blaine inside him. Wanting... or asking for something?

"Tell me?" Blaine says softly.

"Just fuck me," Kurt says. "Please."

Blaine rolls them over, slows them down for a time. He feels abruptly more like an adult, like what's between them is more: older and more profound, substantial somehow. Real and fragile and terrible and beautiful and wounded and freshly healing and— They're doing this together. Together. And Blaine knows it's not just the sex, but this new thing between them: hurting and healing, fearing and trusting. Resisting and surrendering. 

Kurt's fingers are twisted with his, too tight and sweaty, sweaty-slick skin and strong-thin bones, and Blaine looks into Kurt's eyes, and he knows. He knows it deeper than his own bones, deeper than his cells. This is it. He's fucked it up, fucked up so much worse than he'd ever expected to, and Kurt's forgiven him. He is, himself, maybe still a mess for it, hopeful and hopeless with steadfast devotion. And Kurt is—perhaps not a mess, but he's limited in his own ways, imperfect in ways that are perfectly Kurt, in ways that are simply human. And sometimes maybe Blaine cuts himself on Kurt's keen imperfect edges, but without those edges, Kurt wouldn't catch the light the way he does.

Blaine moves, and it feels so incomprehensibly good to be inside Kurt while he understands this. He wants it to last. There are no words he can summon to communicate his epiphany while his body is caught in the thrall of Kurt's. But he tries, not with words, but with touch and motion.

After Kurt comes, even more stunning than memory, lost to his ecstasy, Blaine holds off his own climax, for he loves the defenselessness of Kurt's oversensitivity, loves the way he gulps and shivers uncontrollably through it, the way his eyebrows pinch together and his eyes squeeze shut. How he whimpers and grabs at Blaine, trying to hold on through the unrelenting pleasure, how Blaine knows he likes to endure it, to find his way through to the other side.

But, "Still good?" Blaine asks, to be sure.

"Yeah, yeah," Kurt mumbles. "Oh my god. It's been so long, I— _Fuck_. I forgot."

And that, somehow, is more than Blaine himself can endure. His orgasm swamps him, much too fast, and he gasps through the bright shock of it. "Jesus," he mutters against Kurt's shoulder. The flash flood of pleasure recedes sluggishly down the length of his spine. He breathes in the humid space close to Kurt's body, doesn't move to withdraw immediately, though he should before the condom becomes a problem. But he doesn't want this to be over. Wants to stay here with Kurt for a little while longer.

The heaving of Kurt's chest slows, and his hand pets through the short sweat-soaked hair on the back of Blaine's head. Blaine pushes himself up and winces at the unavoidable disconnection from Kurt's body. He keeps his gaze lowered to Kurt's torso, the damp flush of his skin, the wet smear of ejaculate upon his belly. Blaine runs the pad of his thumb along the fine arch of bone at the base of Kurt's ribcage. Drags semen and sweat with his touch. Looks down further, to the heavy drape of Kurt's partially softened cock low on his belly.

"Hey," Kurt says, low and staticky; his fingers press into the tension at the base of Blaine's skull.

Blaine raises his attention and finds Kurt smiling, shallow but sincere. He replies, "Hi." Slides his hand down to rest just below Kurt's navel, a silent question.

Kurt bites his lip as his smile broadens, and he arches one eyebrow. Pushes his hips up until the head of his cock nudges the edge of Blaine's hand, an unmistakeable answer.

"Okay." Blaine grins and leans down to press his mouth to Kurt's, feels Kurt's lip come free of his teeth so he can meet Blaine's grin with an open, welcoming mouth. Blaine curls his fingers around Kurt's dick, feels it pulse in his hand, and he licks Kurt's pleased whimper from his eager tongue. A lightness swells his heart: they're definitely not finished.


	13. No Need to Be Without

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during/after 4x18 "Shooting Star". The shooting at McKinley provides a catalyst for an overdue conversation. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #13 Message.
> 
> Title from The Tea Party's "The Messenger"

**Early Spring 2013**

The first text vibrates Kurt's cell phone while he's on the office line with Helen, a buyer at Bloomingdales. He watches his phone buzz its way across a stack of glossy printed photos while Helen tells him about the trials of paper training her new puppy. Kurt stares out his office window, tracing the bright shapes of the afternoon light upon the buildings across the street while backtracking through the conversation to determine how exactly an inquiry about which dyes the Italian wool makers are using this coming winter ended up turning into the details of her puppy's personal habits. 

Then his attention drifts to the stack of reading waiting on his desk at home. He needs to start his research paper for Acting Class on the classical origins of theater.

His phone buzzes again, within a minute, and then again within seconds. With a frown, Kurt swivels his chair, reaches for it and turns it over. Three texts from Blaine. He taps through to read while offering affirmative comments to Helen on the other end of the phone. 

"there were 2 gunshots at school," reads the first text. 

Then follows, "pls don't call or txt back we have to stay quite."

"quiet," reads the third.

A fourth arrives shortly after: "we're ok locked in choir room w mr s and coach b but idk where tina or britt are." 

Whatever is left of Kurt's lunch petrifies in his stomach and sinks, dense and cold. "I'm sorry, Helen," Kurt interrupts. His voice sounds distant and robotic to his own ears. "Something urgent's come up. I'll call you back." He disconnects the call before she can reply.

With numb fingers and his heart cringing on the verge of panic, Kurt dials his Dad with one hand and wakes his computer with the other. 

.

Isabelle sends him home with a hug; Kurt is grateful that she insists, for he can't tear his attention away from Twitter and the local news live blogs. He plants himself on the couch with Rachel, his laptop and phone, with MSNBC on the television. Neither of them talk much, just lean against each other while picking distractedly at a bowl of Doritos. Kurt spends a lot of time remembering how to breathe and forcing his muscles to unclench.

His Dad is on a plane back to Lima already. There are S.W.A.T. Teams, room by room evacuations, and no reported injuries or deaths. In the local aerial footage, they think they spot Tina among the students outside. Kurt sends her a text, but he gets no response. 

The perpetrator remains unknown. No one finds a gun or a gunman. As soon as the all clear is given, Kurt calls Blaine, but it goes straight to voicemail, so his phone is off—flat battery maybe—or he's talking to someone else. Kurt leaves a garbled message, mostly consisting of relief and concern and, "I've been watching the news. Please call me when you can," and too much hesitation over the urge to say, 'I love you so much,' and saying instead, "I'm so glad you're safe."

Blaine doesn't call him back that day. Or the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. Kurt gets a few texts, explaining Blaine's tired and feeling off, just trying to get through the rest of the week, but he's okay. He's okay; he just can't talk yet. Kurt tells him that's fine, even though his need to hear Blaine's voice crawls within him like an urgent unreachable itch. But he tells Blaine, of course it's fine. He just wants to know Blaine is safe and okay. If there's anything Kurt can do, anything at all, at any time, let him know. Just call. He'll keep his phone on.

The five hundred miles between them feels like five hundred light years. And Kurt's never been less certain about their friendship. Which feels selfish, because Blaine's the one who's suffered the trauma, not Kurt. And yet, there's a brand new horror prickling in Kurt's chest. It tangles up his innards and has him restless, anxious, and tearful when he's not distracting himself with work, study, or practice. 

Because losing Blaine like that? Just the few hours where it felt like a possibility, made Kurt rage inside, made him want to fly, like a superhero, back to Ohio and tear down the bricks of William H. McKinley High School with his bare hands, made him want to scream at the injustice until his throat bled. Made him want to find the gunman and dash his brains out on the pavement and do unspeakable things to his corpse. 

And then it made him want to find his friends and find Blaine and never let him go. But all Kurt could do was sit on the sofa silently and hold too tightly to Rachel's hand.

When it's over, they together cry in relief. But Kurt still has the flaccid, ugly shape his anger has left, and nothing to do with it but try to swallow all the reasons for it having been there.

Adam texts him, concerned, offering to bring food and distractions—or to take Kurt out for food and distractions. Kurt only replies once, to say he's fine but busy, and he'll be in touch on the weekend. There's nothing else he can think of to say to Adam, nothing at all, not even the most banal pleasantries. More than that, he doesn't want to be feeling the way he's feeling in Adam's company. Avoiding him in the NYADA halls makes Kurt feel like a fugitive, but he doesn't want to see Adam at all, doesn't want to have to talk to him. The realization isn't one he relishes, but he can't think what to do with it yet. He likes Adam, doesn't he?

Even when Sue Sylvester turns herself in, explains to the press with uncharacteristic sobriety, that the gun was hers, the firing was accidental, it doesn't change much of Kurt's internal landscape. He isn't even all that surprised.

.

It's Friday afternoon and his father is on C-SPAN, on the floor of the House, giving an impassioned speech advocating for the passage of a new bill to ban teachers from keeping firearms in public schools. He looks tired, and Kurt knows his treatments are going well. But, god, he looks so _tired_. 

It goes about as well as Kurt's expected, when the gun lobby owns the majority of the politicians voting.

Later, that same evening, in an interview on Fox News (and Kurt had called his Dad begging him not to go on Fox, but his Dad had insisted, said going into the enemy camp was the only chance he had at changing minds). His Dad has to fend off attacks accusing him of too much personal bias on the issue because this happened at his son's old school.

His father explains that his personal bias is exactly the right amount for him to speak for any parent in America. His bias is important and essential because this isn't an issue to intellectualize away, not when our children are at risk. Of course it's personal, there's little more personal than the lives of our families. His son's friends are still in that school, among them a boy who'd lived with his family for a year and his son's boyfriend. All of our children deserve safety, and its the responsibility of the adults making the laws to bear that responsibility, not to let their consciences be bought by the NRA.

The Fox interviewer isn't kind. The pettiness, the fallacies, the abstraction of issues so far beyond their actual human relevance reignite the slow burn of Kurt's anger. He takes to the internet, stays up until one AM, arguing under various aliases that can't be attached to his real identity or to his father, only to stop when he realizes it's not making an iota of difference. Opinion polls already show widespread support for his Dad's bill, but it'll never pass, even though the list of willing co-sponsors contains nearly every Democrat Kurt can recognize by name and face. It doesn't matter. His father can't win this fight; it was over before it's begun. Kurt's anger burns down, snuffs out into resignation. It's time for bed.

And though he's watched the recording of his Dad's interview several times that night, Kurt doesn't once notice his Dad had left the ex- off "boyfriend".

.

Kurt's cell phone rings shortly after he's crawled into bed; it's just after two in the morning. Kurt squints at the screen, bright in the dark. Then his eyes widen, and he quickly taps the screen to answer.

"Blaine," he says before he's got enough air for volume. " _Hi_."

"Did I wake you?" Blaine asks. His voice is soft down the line, tentative in a way Kurt can't identify.

But it doesn't matter: the sound of Blaine's voice sinks warm relief into Kurt's body, settles the restlessness that's been crawling beneath his skin for days. He sits, pulling his covers up to his shoulders and adjusting his grip on the phone. "Gosh, no actually. It's fine, I'm fine, um, wow, it's so good to hear from you. I've been so worried. How are you?"

"I'm... Actually, I don't know," Blaine says, wry and still quiet, almost as if he's afraid someone might overhear him. "I'm not really fine, but I'm okay. I saw your Dad on TV tonight."

"Oh, yeah, well, that was..." Kurt trails off with a resigned sigh.

"He was amazing, but those guys are jerks, and they're wrong," Blaine says with more volume and startling fierceness. Then more quietly again: "I'm sorry they were so awful to him."

"Me too," Kurt says. Works his jaw against the tension growing there. He doesn't want to indulge this frustration while talking with Blaine. It doesn't seem fair. He just wants to... What does he want? The longing in his chest is strong, but unspecific. He's got no clue how to satisfy it, or even if it's something that should be satisfied. He's quiet for too long.

"Are you okay?" Blaine asks.

Kurt laughs at that, after Blaine's week, that he's so sweetly asking Kurt this. "I've got a surplus of impotent anger, but what else is new?" Kurt tries to settle more comfortably into his pillows. The window in the living room is open a few inches to allow the spring breeze in. It lets in, too, the rhythmic rumble and swoosh of the street sweeper. Kurt watches its flashing golden lights strobe across the curtain of his room. 

It's several long moments before Blaine speaks. When he does, he says simply, "I love you." 

Kurt can't rally a response quickly enough before Blaine continues, "That's why I called you, Kurt. I just... needed to tell you."

"I love you, too," Kurt finally says, but it sounds too glib, less than it should. Means even less than he wants it too, after this week, because letting it mean everything he wants it to in this moment is more feeling than his heart can channel. It's like he's run out of emotional bandwidth, all the nauseating anxiety of the week, the despair of his own impotency in protecting the people he loves. He does love Blaine, and right now that's making him exhausted and confused and weirdly lost.

"Yeah," Blaine says, "but..." 

Kurt hears him let out a shaky breath. "But?"

"It's not the same is it?" Blaine asks, a fragile thread of sadness in the tentative words.

"The same as what?" Kurt asks, because he doesn't want to assume.

There's a soft, exasperated huff from Blaine. "Are you still seeing your New York guy?"

"Yes," Kurt says, though it feels like a half-truth; trying to explain all of that mess to Blaine is the last thing either of them need. "But I don't want to talk about him with you."

"Of course not," Blaine says with unexpected rancor. Then he sighs, and Kurt imagines Blaine closes his eyes. He continues in a gentler tone. "I just... I need to know, Kurt, what am I to you now? When you say you love me, what does it mean? When you took me to bed on Valentine's Day, what did that mean to you? Because I know you well enough to know that it didn't mean nothing."

"It means... It meant—" Kurt breaks off, twists his fingers into the bedding tight enough to ache, and he tries not to remember too much about that night (but remembers it anyway). "Blaine," he tries to start again. He's ill prepared for this conversation, but he tries to find words for things he only knows by feeling, not by logic. "You're... so special to me. I care about you."

"Then why are you still dating him?" It's accusatory enough, Kurt flinches.

"Look, if you're jealous, I can't do this with you."

"I'm not jealous, Kurt. I have no right to be jealous, but I am confused."

"Is this really what you want to talk about tonight? I thought we were okay?"

"No, god, I thought we were too, but lately. Well, this week—"

"What's this about, Blaine? It's not really about Adam, is it?"

"Um," Blaine says, and there's a tremor in his voice.

Kurt asks, "Are you okay?"

A sniff. "No, not really."

"Honey—"

"Don't call me that if you don't mean it." The words snap sharp down the line between them.

Kurt chews his lip. "Are you mad at me?"

"No, I'm not _mad_. I'm—"

"Hey," Kurt says, and he pulls his legs up, tucking his knees up as close to his chest as he can. "Blaine, whatever it is..." he says and trails off, uselessly smoothing the blankets over his bent knees with his free hand. He can't say it's okay—he can't even say 'we can talk about it,' because didn't he just say there are things he does not want to talk about? "Blaine," Kurt tries again. "I'm here for you, okay?"

"Monday," Blaine says so softly.

"Do you want to tell me about Monday?"

"I wish I could just forget it ever happened. Even knowing now that it was Coach Sylvester's gun and no one got hurt, that we weren't ever in actual danger— It doesn't make it all okay. I keep thinking about the other, worse scenarios, and I—" Blaine breaks off with a hiccup.

"That makes sense to me," Kurt offers.

"But some people are just like, 'get over it, no one got hurt,' and I just... none of us really are? Over it. I mean, like Sam, he's really struggling, and I don't know what to do to help him, and I feel so inadequate, just within myself, not being able to do anything to help him."

"You are helping him," Kurt says, and his voice has gone thin and high. He sounds too young to be offering wisdom or comfort. "I'm sure you are, just by being his friend, right?" Kurt tries to think of what his father used to say to him when he was mired in sadness and doubt. But none of it seems to fit this. And it doesn't seem appropriate to tell Blaine he's been feeling so powerless too. "Hindsight doesn't change what you experienced," he says. "Whatever you felt then is real, Blaine."

"Yeah," Blaine says. "I've never been more scared in my life. I don't even know how to describe it. I honestly believed someone was going to die. Violently. That I was going to die, and part of me hoped I'd be first so I wouldn't have to watch my friends—" This time Blaine's sob is unmistakable.

"Oh, Blaine..." Tears of sympathy well up hot. Kurt closes his eyes and listens to the growl of the sweeper outside, and inside his ear, Blaine's ragged breaths. He wishes it were possible to wish himself home in this moment, by virtue of wanting it so badly. But the world has never quite worked that way.

"Everyone was so scared, Kurt. And then someone, um, Artie maybe? I can't remember. But they started making recordings for their families, to say good bye, you know, and talk about the things they were leaving behind, the secrets their families should know. And then all I could think about was how much I didn't actually want to die at all, and how I still had so much I had to do and how sorry I was... I didn't want to make a video of that. Saying good bye and apologizing for my mistakes.

"I kept thinking about all the ways I'd let myself down and the people I love most, how I hadn't managed to become the person I want to be yet. All the things I'd never have a chance to fix or finish."

Kurt wishes he could tell Blaine he's never let him down. But Blaine would know it for the lie it would be. "You're too hard on yourself," Kurt says.

"No, I'm really not," Blaine says, and it's said with more conviction than self-pity. "I know what I did to you, Kurt." And the bitterness in Blaine's voice is tinged with such vehemence, Kurt realizes, oh, that's it. That's why Blaine called, seeking some kind of greater absolution from Kurt than he's already got.

Kurt meets Blaine's words with a firm tone of his own, because he doesn't want Blaine's guilt any more now than he did back at Christmas. He never truly wants it, and Blaine doesn't need to do this to himself. It doesn't help either of them. "I know what you did to me better than you do," Kurt says, "and I'm telling you it's not something I want you feeling guilt over. If I've forgiven you, surely you can forgive yourself."

A humorless puff of laughter rustles down the line. "If you've forgiven me, then why aren't we boyfriends again?"

Kurt stares at the dark angles of the ceiling. "Because, it's not that simple."

"Is it because you don't love me anymore?"

"No," Kurt can't keep his irritation from prickling over his tongue. "Don't be ridiculous."

"But you don't love me the way you did, when you told me we'd grow old together."

"I trusted you, and you broke my heart, do you really expect it to be the same? And how I feel about you doesn't matter when I don't know what I believe in anymore. I don't know if love is enough, if I can put myself through that again—not with you, not with anyone."

"Then why are you dating him?"

Kurt's anger deflates. "Because he's kind, and he's patient, and because I don't know, and I want to find the answer. If it's possible for me."

Silence for several long breaths. "And you think he's possible for you, but I'm not?"

"I'm telling you, I don't know."

"Will I ever be possible again for you, Kurt?"

"God, do we really have to talk about this again?"

"Again?" Blaine asks. "We've never talked about this, Kurt. It's a simple enough question. Do you think we can ever be together again? Because you know that's what I want. I want to be with you, and I need to know if it's possible, or if I should just... stop."

Kurt wants to say no, they can't be together again like Blaine wants, and maybe Blaine should stop hoping or waiting or whatever he's doing. But Kurt knows he can't say it and mean it, nor can he kill with words the persistent longing in his heart for Blaine. If it were that simple, he'd be over it by now. He sighs, and speaks more gently. "I just don't know, Blaine. Maybe?"

"Maybe," Blaine echoes bitterly. "And if I'd died on Monday, how would you remember me? As the boy who broke your heart and made it so you could never trust anyone enough to let yourself _be_ in love again?"

"No," Kurt whispers.

But Blaine doesn't hear him. "You wonder why I can't forgive myself? When you tell me I damaged you like that? You're the person I love most in the world, how could I? Kurt, I don't understand how I could do that, how could I leave you this way?"

"Blaine, I'm not _damaged_ ," Kurt says, it's the wrong word entirely. "I'm—"

"I want to make it better, somehow. I just don't know how. But the thought of no longer being able to love you, to try to rebuild what we lost? To have left you with the memory of me as someone who hurt you so badly... I couldn't bear it."

"Blaine." Kurt can't hold his tears back any longer. "That isn't how I would remember you." Memories of Blaine are among the most carefully curated in Kurt's collection.

"How would you then?" Soft and miserable, beseeching.

"I'd remember you..." Kurt turns his face to his shoulder to wipe his tears. "I'd remember the warmth of your smile and the love in your eyes." He sniffs and blinks, and he does remember as he speaks. "I'd remember your hand reaching out to me, over and over again. I'd remember how brave you were, and the way you held me." He doesn't want to think about this, the unthinkable possibilities this week has made him face, but he goes on anyway. It's what he does. Kurt even dredges up a weak smile. "All the times you surprised me."

"Really?" Blaine asks.

"Yes. I'd remember the way you sang, how joyful you were, how bold and bright, and how it changed me. How passionate and generous you were, and how you made me feel so safe and alive." Kurt has to reach for a tissue to dab at his nose. "Blaine, I'd miss you every single day of my life." 

Blaine doesn't speak then, but Kurt can hear him crying softly. He pushes his hand through his hair, clenches his fist and tugs to find some relieving distraction from the way he aches with this inconsolable emotion. It's kin to grief, but that's not what it is. The terrible instinctive urge to reach out to Blaine is knotted so hard in his body, it feels impossible to endure it. How can it be so deeply rooted, like it's always been a part of his make up, he just didn't know until he met Blaine. Blaine's pain echoes in Kurt's chest, wraps tight in his throat, stings and blurs his vision.

The silence drags too long, so Kurt says, his voice watery and wavering over the deeply felt truth of the sentiment: "I wish I could hold you, then maybe you'd believe me. I want only good things for you, Blaine. I love you."

There's a puff of breath in his ear followed by a wet sniff. "Do you know what I wish? I wish you could fuck me," Blaine says, low and soft and certain.

Kurt tips his head back until it collides with the unyielding wall behind him. He shivers. " _Blaine_." He can't tell if he's endorsing or protesting.

"Would you? If you were here? Kurt?"

And it's like all the crazy emotion surging in his body just careened to a sudden halt. Kurt fumbles with the phone in his hand. Flushes hot with the flash of the thought, the imagining of it colored in with sharp, bright spiking memories of heat and laughter and ecstasy. But the sadness clings too, the terrible void of missing a lost thing never to be reclaimed in quite the same way. And it's overlaid with the ghost of this week's loss that, blessedly, fortunately, did not come to pass. But the visions playing across the eye of his memory overrun those bitter things. "I—" Kurt says, and he feels it, the tidal upsurge of the desire he can't banish. "If I were there, and you truly wanted it, and you asked me? Tonight, I would."

"I wish you _were_ here," Blaine says fervently, though his voice is still thick with tears. "God, I just want to feel you, Kurt. Your skin, your heat, your hands on me. I want to smell you and taste you and feel you inside. I want you so much, sometimes I can't breathe. You have no idea how much I miss you."

"You can tell me, if you want to," Kurt says, scarce breath of his own, and he ventures cautiously, but with determination, because maybe he can give Blaine something tonight, something more than sadness and regret and persistent guilt. "What would I be doing with you if I were there?"

"Um," Blaine says. Kurt hears the rustle of sheets. Blaine's breath. "You're here, in my room, and it's really dark. There's no moon."

Kurt closes his eyes in the darkness of his own room, shuts out the street sweeper, and he imagines it. Blaine's bedroom in the deep of the night. He's been there before, it's not a long journey back. 

"We've been sitting on the bed while we talk, like we've been talking. But we're not touching, and I haven't turned a light on. We're both crying, but I'm crying more, and it's getting hard to stop, so you lean over and you kiss me. I can't stop crying, but you keep kissing me anyway, and touching me, and you're moving closer, and it feels so good, to have your mouth on mine."

"I can taste your tears," Kurt says. 

Blaine continues. "You unbutton my pajamas and get me naked. Then you undress too, and you tell me you're going to take care of me, that everything will be okay. You say you want me to lie down, on my belly. So I do that, and then... you're right there over me, and you don't—" 

"Go on," Kurt encourages. "Tell me what I'm doing."

"There's no foreplay. You just... uh, lube up and push in, like, really slowly, so I feel all of you, everything. And, god, you're so huge pushing into me, I can't feel anything else but you." 

Kurt believes every word of it. "God, you feel so good," Kurt says, and the memory of sinking into Blaine's body flutters wildly in Kurt's veins, timed to the pulse of his heart, and the heat runs heavily to his groin. But he doesn't touch himself; he listens. "You always do."

"Once you're all the way in, you don't move. You just settle your weight, your hands are on my shoulders and in my hair, your lips on my neck and cheek and mouth, and you hold me, and you talk to me, and I keep crying. You stay like that for a long time. You're so warm and solid, and your skin is so smooth, and you keep talking to me as you start to move, like just barely, and I want more, but you're just holding me and moving slowly, and I'm still crying a little bit and begging you, but you just... hold me like that, and you start to fuck me so gently even though I'm aching for you to just drive into me so hard I can't think. And I keep asking you, 'Please, Kurt, please.'" 

Despite himself, Kurt groans, and squirms down into his bed until he's flat on his back and his hand has drifted down to rest on his belly. "You're so hard to resist when you beg so sweetly. Do I give in and fuck you as hard as you're wanting it? I know exactly how you like it." 

"I know, but no, you won't let me go like that. You hold me back from it for so long, and the way you're holding me, I can't move, and you're so thick and hot, sliding so long and easy, and I can feel every inch of you. I can't quite come like this, but it feels so good, oh god, and I—"

When Blaine doesn't continue, Kurt prompts him again, "What?"

"I'm not sure I even want to come, because I don't want it to be over. I want to keep feeling like this as long as possible, connected and held and..."

"And?"

"Cherished, like you'll never let go of me again."

Kurt's heart misses a beat, then pounds again hard, with strange urgency. "Oh, honey. I wish I could give you that." And he does wish for it, for the belief this will be possible again with Blaine someday. He wants it to be, and he can't deny it to himself tonight. He's too tired of the fight. The counterpoint comes in a rush behind, unwanted yet unsurprising: he'll never feel this way about Adam.

"Do you mean it?" Blaine asks.

It takes a long time to bring the word up from his lungs. Even longer to trust it upon his tongue as an assurance to Blaine. It's not even a promise; it can't be. But it is, no matter how Kurt resists it, true: "Yes," Kurt says.


	14. The Same Old Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set between 4x14 "I Do" and 4x15 "Girls (and Boys) On Film". After the hook up at Will and Emma's non-wedding, Kurt doesn't know what he wants, Blaine does his best to be it anyway, and nothing really changes. That doesn't mean this doesn't matter. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #14 Neon.
> 
> Title from Roxy Music's "Same Old Scene"

**February 2013**

From the passenger seat, Blaine watches Tina unlock her front door. She turns back and waves before she goes inside; she looks happy. Blaine feels happy. Smiling, he waves back.

Beside him, Kurt asks, "So how long has this been going on with Tina anyway?" Kurt turns to look over his shoulder as they back out of Tina's drive. Kurt's borrowed his Dad's SUV for the day, and had picked up Blaine at school to take him to the movies. Tina agreed to join them. The afternoon has been close to perfect, spending time like they once did. Blaine could almost forget it's his senior year, not Kurt's. Almost, but not quite. 

As they wend their way out of Tina's subdivision and back to the main road heading east, Blaine explains the whole business of Tina's crush as best he can (given he was unconscious for the incident that's prompted Kurt's question). He tries to put words to the value of her friendship, the ways she's been there for him that have made him feel both cared for and wanted (and he makes sure it's clear to Kurt that he doesn't mean sexually).

"So, I mean, we're okay," Blaine says, at last. "I know she didn't mean any harm."

Kurt's expression is a tad sour. "That's not really the point, but, if you're okay, then..." Kurt shrugs.

"I guess so?" Blaine says. Mostly he doesn't want to dwell on it. He's riding home with Kurt, and his parents are out overnight. Not that he wants to assume anything's going to happen between him and Kurt, even though the casual touches and the looks they've shared today have been charged with the memories of Saturday. He just wants to enjoy their last day together before Kurt returns to New York and Blaine's back to not knowing when they'll see each other again.

It's because he's realized that friendship truly is the most important thing, whether it's Tina or Kurt or Sam. And after Kurt's reluctance to talk about what they shared in the hotel room, Blaine's not going to initiate anything, no matter how much he may want it. He'll let Kurt make those overtures if he chooses to.

By the time they're pulling in to Blaine's driveway, the conversation has moved on from Tina's crush, to Diva week in general, and Kurt's saying he wishes he could have seen Blaine power through a Queen number with a fever. 

"Would you like to come in for a while?" Blaine asks. "Or do you need to head home straight away?"

"Um," Kurt says. "Well, I spent yesterday with my family. I can come in for a while."

"Great!" Blaine says, and Kurt pulls in to the guest parking space. 

They go inside, and there's a not entirely comfortable silence between them as they hang their coats in the foyer, but Kurt's smiling, so Blaine aims for normal. "So what would you like to do? Another movie?"

Kurt pauses in folding his gloves and wrinkles his nose at the suggestion. After all, they're just back from the double feature. Blaine considers the other ways they used to spend their time together. Music, movies, reading or studying together, talking, Kurt teaching him how to cook, sex. Most often it was sex when they were on their own.

"Do you want to go upstairs?" he asks. That's the place for most of those things. He's too full of popcorn and candy to want more food yet, but he's quietly hoping Kurt may agree to stay for dinner.

Kurt tucks his gloves into the pocket of his coat, looks at the ceiling and then at some indeterminate area below Blaine's chin. His smile fades. "I don't know if that's a good idea."

"We can just hang out, you know? Like we used to?" Blaine holds his hand out, palm up, within the line of Kurt's gaze.

Kurt hesitates before he reaches across the space between them, places his hand in Blaine's; he looks back up and offers a cautious, "Okay."

.

Upstairs, Blaine gestures for Kurt to sit on the bed, but Kurt makes no move to, he just stands between the bed and the armchair. Blaine says, "You know where the magazines are. I'll just put on some music?"

"Yeah, sure," says Kurt, but his expression is drawn in concern and the line of his shoulders is tense.

"Are you in the mood for anything in particular?" Blaine asks and then realizes that may sound overloaded, so he adds, "Music wise?"

Kurt blinks rapidly and looks about the room; he hasn't been here since they broke up. Kurt eyes the bed cautiously as if it's a treacherous landscape. "Did you bring him here?" Kurt asks. The words come out stilted and hollow. "Is this where you—?" Kurt breaks off with a hiccuping breath, and Blaine sees his rising distress.

" _No_ ," Blaine speaks quickly to reassure—to banish the very idea of it. His fingers freeze on the wheel of his iPod. "No. God, no, Kurt. He was never here."

Kurt relaxes, and the corner of his lips tugs into a suggestion of a smile. "Roxy Music then?" Kurt asks, with an easier sidelong glance at Blaine, and he bends to unlace his shoes. "It seems like we used to listen to that a lot in here."

"Sure, whatever you want." Blaine finds the playlist and pushes play. It's true that they did used to listen to this one a lot—sometimes Blaine worried they listened to it too much for Kurt's tastes, but then Kurt started asking Blaine to play it, and it became a regular choice when they spent time together in Blaine's room. But it's also a playlist that Blaine associates so much with time spent with Kurt that he hasn't played these songs for a few weeks now.

The tender panging of the electric guitar opens on "More than This" and brings with it the expected wave of memory: bare skin cast in ochre lamplight, heat and sweat, and the breath of summer nights through the open window. Anticipation drawn into the most delightful agony; touches gentle and demanding, commanding; a scarf around his wrists or covering his eyes. Blaine blinks back the even more vivid images and sensations the music stirs, and tries to remember if there were any interesting articles in the latest _Rolling Stone_ to mention. Something to talk about that's not so heavy. But when he turns back to Kurt, he finds Kurt standing beside the bed still, waiting for him with his own hand extended in invitation. A question burns in his gaze. Oh.

_"I could feel at the time,  
There was no way of knowing." _

When Blaine unsticks his tongue—and he doesn't dare hope, and he didn't expect, but— "Feeling nostalgic?" he asks.

_"Fallen leaves in the night,  
Who can say where they're blowing?" _

"A little," Kurt says; his voice is soft with uncertainty. "Is that all right?"

"Yes," Blaine says. Swallows down Kurt's name, and goes to him. For an instant, he wants to lower himself to his knees, wants to offer up all of himself to Kurt: it's the pull of the music, there were so many times— 

But he doesn't, because Saturday Kurt said he didn't think he could. And Blaine understands why that's how it has to be. Kurt's leaving tomorrow; they're not together; and Blaine doesn't want to ask for more than Kurt's able to give—nor does he want try to give Kurt more than he asks for.

Kurt glances down at their joined hands and then back up to Blaine's face; his gaze catches on Blaine's lips. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about kissing you," Kurt says, barely above a whisper. The gaze he flicks up to Blaine's eyes is unexpectedly shy. It seems Kurt's mind is elsewhere too, on a different past intimacy set to the same soundtrack. 

"Oh," Blaine exhales, because he remembers this moment—or something very much like it. It's like _déjà vu_ , except it's a true recollection: a flash of Kurt—nearly two years ago, younger, more innocent—standing fretfully in Blaine's bedroom for the first time. He'd been wearing that white jacket with the padlocks. His top hat sat in the chair by the window. It was after school the day he'd transferred back to McKinley, and the separation—of even just that afternoon—had made Blaine's desire for Kurt seem so urgent and huge. _"Me too,"_ he'd said, and laughed. _"I got in trouble for not paying attention in Latin class."_

_"More than this—there is nothing.  
More than this—tell me one thing?" _

"May I kiss you?" Kurt prompts in Blaine's silence, tugging Blaine closer. He's blinking too fast and his lips are a slim, nervous line. But the _words_. They're the same too, as his memory. He studies Kurt's gaze, confirms this isn't coincidence. 

"You don't need to ask," Blaine says, because he thinks that's how he responded back then, He tilts his head and leans in to meet Kurt halfway. He's not sure what they're doing, but if a memory of the early days in their romance is something Kurt wants to revisit, then Blaine is certainly amenable to accommodating that desire. It feels like he's been granted a reprieve from the more difficult things that could be haunting them.

The tension in Kurt's lips melts into soft familiarity as they part against Blaine's. It's less chaste than their early kisses used to start out. Kurt's tongue is already slipping past Blaine's bottom lip, dipping in deeper to coax out Blaine's response. Blaine remembers when every kiss was a novelty, every little variation something to be savored and noted. It feels the same way now, when any kiss could be the last one Kurt chooses to give him. He's breathing heavily already when he slides his mouth to the side to say, "Shall we sit down together? On the bed?" He remembers saying that clearly.

"Yeah," Kurt breathes back. "Yes."

It had been such a bold move back then, their first time making out in assured privacy, the first time upon a bed together as boyfriends. They sit, and Blaine cups Kurt's jaw, moves back in for another kiss, and Kurt kisses him back tenderly and with unhurried relish. For a time it's all soft breath, slow tongue, and curious lips; Blaine's hand cradling Kurt's face, and Kurt's hand resting upon Blaine's shoulder. 

Inevitably, it gets hotter and their kisses deepen. When Blaine hears Kurt's whimper lengthen into a low moan, he presses kisses down Kurt's neck, nuzzles beneath his jawline to find the vibrations of Kurt's voice. But the fuzzy high neck of Kurt's sweater foils his attempts at much more than that. So he slides a hand down to the hem of Kurt's sweater, carefully begins tugging it up to suggest removing it. "Would you mind?" he asks. "Taking this off?"

Kurt swallows and shakes his head. Blaine helps him with his sweater, until Kurt's pulling it off over his head and tossing it toward the chair. In its wake, Kurt's hair is ruffled and staticky. Combined with the flush staining his cheeks, it makes him look younger, in accord with memory. Blaine remembers from the past, pulling on one of the padlocks fastening the white jacket and asking Kurt, _"Can we do something about this?"_

Kurt had unhooked the ring of keys from around his neck and passed them to Blaine, blushing furiously and saying, _"Go ahead and... um, unlock me."_

It had taken a long time, trying keys in each lock to find the right one, then unlocking it, pulling it free and setting it aside on his nightstand. Kurt leaned back as Blaine worked, his breath quick and his eyes bright. And it had been as if Kurt were, in that moment, _his_ in a way Blaine hadn't expected or anticipated. Just the simple act of opening those locks was an unwrapping of a gift, the granting of an unexpected and strange intimacy. 

And it was, up until that point in time, the most desperately erotic moment of Blaine's life. When the last lock had come free and Kurt sat back up to shyly take off the jacket, his hands were trembling and his neck was blotched red. Blaine had glanced down and seen how hard Kurt was in his pants—as hard as Blaine himself was. And Blaine had a wild hope in the moment, that maybe this was the day they'd have sex for the first time. 

It hadn't been—that wouldn't happen for several more months—but he'd known then that Kurt would be the one for him eventually. At least he wanted him to be. Their next kiss was the hottest yet, strained full of inarticulate desire.

"Would you like to lie down?" Blaine asks next, hears his voice in the present overlaid with the more tentative delivery of his past self. Reorients himself in Kurt's presence now. 

"Yes," Kurt answers.

Wide-eyed and breathless, Kurt lies back into Blaine's pillows, and Blaine moves over him. He kisses Kurt as if they're beginning again: chaste and soft, only gradually coaxing Kurt open. And Kurt opens so beautifully, letting Blaine in to linger within such lush deep kisses. His hands around Blaine's shoulders hold Blaine close, and Blaine dares to rest a hand low on Kurt's waist. 

As they kiss his hand drifts down to where Kurt's t-shirt is tucked into his jeans, and Blaine tugs the edge free just enough that he can slip his hand up beneath it, venturing shyly over the trembling muscles of Kurt's belly. It's flatter and firmer than it was then, but just as gloriously warm and smooth. Kurt shivers beneath his touch, and Blaine eases from the kiss to let Kurt speak if he wishes, to see what permission may lie in Kurt's hooded gaze.

"We probably shouldn't go much further..." Kurt whispers, still playing at their past make-out session. This was the day when they'd decided that below the belt would remain _terra incognita._

Blaine plays along. "Do you want to stop?" he asks gently, stroking over Kurt's skin.

"I don't know." Which abruptly doesn't sound like play; even though the words are right, the tone is wrong. From memory, 'I don't know' was Kurt speaking a yes he was afraid of saying. But Blaine isn't sure it's not honest uncertainty right now, if Kurt wants to stop or if he wants more. Blaine doesn't know what Kurt wants from him.

Blaine hesitates. Removes his hand from under Kurt's t-shirt. "Talk to me, please?"

A grimace. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"Okay, then what?"

"Just..." Kurt reaches up and undoes the buttons at Blaine's collar. "How can I still want you like this?"

Blaine presses his lips together and passes his hand over Kurt's rumpled shirt, smoothing it back down. "Do you actually want me to try to answer that for you?"

"No." Kurt rolls his head sideways to look off at the wall. "What was it like? With Eli?"

It's not a name Blaine wants to hear. He doesn't want to go through all of this with Kurt again, especially not now. The futility of trying to explain it remains. Blaine doesn't know the right words to convey how sure he'd been that he'd lost Kurt to New York, the way his choking loneliness and despair had clicked over into a mad sort of exhilaration, and thus, how moving toward Eli had seemed like an inevitability in that moment, an urgent rebellion and confirmation he couldn't resist. How he'd been burning up with his righteous defiance and anger, how he'd mistaken the heat in his veins for truth. 

The sex had been direct and physically satisfying but so impersonal. It had left him violated within his own heart and overexposed in his body. When it was over, the cold clarity had overtaken him. How could he explain to Kurt how terrified he was when the understanding of what he'd done crashed in? 

Blaine wishes he knew how to explain to Kurt: the only thing that matters about Blaine's encounter with Eli is that it reaffirmed and confirmed Blaine's devotion to Kurt. Nothing else is germane to Blaine's feelings now. But Kurt still hurts over it, and Blaine can't fix that with words.

All he has is the here and now with Kurt, where the beat of Blaine's heart is steady, quickened with desire, but pulsing with warmth and safety. He's not confused or lost, but settled and sure. And anyway, he thinks what Kurt's looking for is not Blaine's guilt, but reassurance. "It wasn't anything like this," Blaine says simply.

"What's different?"

"You know what's different, Kurt."

Kurt drags a fingertip down the side of Blaine's neck. "This is better."

"So much better."

"Even though we're not—?" Kurt leaves it hanging, for Blaine to confirm and acknowledge: this doesn't mean what Blaine keeps wanting it to mean. 

He makes himself smile; he can tell Kurt that he understands and he accepts. Softly he echoes and completes: "Even though we're not together."

"Okay," Kurt says, and then, "Will you kiss me some more?"

"Are we going back to that day again?"

Kurt's gaze casts down, his eyelashes fan soft above his flushed cheeks. "You told me at Christmas you wished for a time machine. Sometimes I wish I had one too. I wonder sometimes if we'd done things differently, if..."

"Hey," Blaine says, tries to coax Kurt's eyes back up with a touch to Kurt's face. "We don't have to do any hard stuff today. We can just be together."

There's still a tinge of sadness in Kurt's smile. "I remember wanting you so badly then, the day I transferred back? Meeting you after school? I hardly knew what the feeling was. I was so scared of how much I just wanted, and I didn't understand it. It was so much more than I expected, and I didn't know what to ask for or how to ask, so I just kept... kind of... avoiding it, I guess? Sometimes I wonder how it would have been if I'd been braver."

"And now?"

"I don't know. It's completely different, but..."

"Are you scared now?"

"It scares me sometimes when I don't understand why I want something. You know that."

"You can want something just because you want it," Blaine says. "It doesn't have to be complicated."

"I doubt you actually believe that, Blaine. Considering."

"Well, I can choose not to make it complicated, can't I?"

Kurt huffs a soft laugh. "What about you? Are you afraid?"

"I'm not afraid to be with you now. I wasn't then either."

"No?"

"No, I knew exactly what I wanted. But I also knew you were less sure."

"You never said anything," Kurt says. "You could have told me. We could have talked."

"I knew you were scared. I didn't want to scare you more," Blaine says. "I'm not sure we could have. I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to tell you."

"Well, will you tell me now? What you wanted then?"

"How about..." Blaine lets his gaze travel down, along with his hand to the hem of Kurt's t-shirt. He carefully works more of it free of Kurt's waistband. When he has enough slack, he pushes it up to bare skin. Then he looks back to Kurt. "I could show you? If you want?"

"All right."

In a far bolder move than he would have made in the past, Blaine presses his smile to Kurt's exposed belly. He works his way up slowly, pushing Kurt's t-shirt as he trails lips and breath up to Kurt's sternum. He follows with his hands, skimming over Kurt's ribs, finding the slight swell of his pecs, but skirting around his nipples without touching them.

The beat of Kurt's heart is vivid beneath Blaine's lips, and he listens for Kurt to speak, to ask or direct him. But Kurt's not asking, he's not saying anything at all. Just breathing raggedly and clutching at the duvet. So Blaine works his way back down with slower, opening kisses. When he's back at Kurt's belly, he slides his mouth down the edge of Kurt's belt, kisses along, nips at the softer flesh of Kurt's belly with his lips and presses his thumbs just below the band of Kurt's waistband, massaging outwards while dipping lower to catch the sensitive skin bracketed by Kurt's hips.

And then, Kurt's hand bumps past Blaine's cheek and fumbles at his own belt, pulling the leather through the buckle with a _slither_ and _clink_ , and Kurt's saying, with so little breath the word is a fragile thing, gossamer thin, suspended in the air for a long moment before it settles: "Please?" It's perfect.

The walls seem to draw close around Blaine then, embracing him in the few tender seconds before he moves, one hand down to rest his fingers lightly upon the rough denim covering the thick line of Kurt's erection. Beneath his fingers, Kurt's pulse surges eagerly. 

So softly, Blaine asks, with all the trepidation of his imagined past self, "Do you want me to touch you here?" 

"Yes," Kurt exhales. His fingers work the top button of his jeans undone, and then scrabble at—and fail to lift—the tab of the zipper.

"Let me?" Blaine asks. He folds his hand around Kurt's, his thumb slides under Kurt's palm, and his fingertips skate across Kurt's restless knuckles.

"Okay." Kurt moves his hand off to the side to let it rest lax upon the bedspread.

Slowly, Blaine draws Kurt's zipper down. He tries to imagine this is the first time he's doing this, while also remembering the first time he did. It's not so different, but he wishes now he'd taken more time then. So he'll take the time now. Blaine reaches into Kurt's open pants, finds soft gray cotton, stretched warm over the column of his hard cock. The fly of Kurt's underwear (snug Calvin Klein boxers today) has snaps. Blaine uses both hands to pull them apart, one by one. His heartbeat rises in his throat, and he glances up to see how Kurt's doing.

He finds Kurt flushed everywhere he's bare. His chest rises and falls with deep breaths, and his eyes are closed tight. The rush of blood pushes Kurt's cock up against Blaine's fingertips. "Still okay?" he asks, because he would have, back then, when he was worried about going too fast for Kurt. Everything between them today feels just as delicate.

Kurt's mouth opens to speak, but he just nods. Blaine slips his fingers into the open fly, brushes along hot, satin-smooth skin, and Kurt whimpers. Blaine reaches in farther, wraps his fingers loosely around Kurt's shaft and brings him out so he can see him, the heavy length of Kurt's erection cradled in his hand.

"You're gorgeous," Blaine says, and he catches the heady sex-scent of Kurt's arousal. It taps an even deeper hunger.

Kurt breath puffs out in a soft laugh, which quickly turns to a bitten off groan as Blaine firms his hold and drags his fist up, and then down again. 

"I could— Would you like me to kiss you here?" Blaine asks as, on the next pull up, he runs his thumb up over Kurt's glans, smears a slippery bead of precome in a small circle; he aches to taste.

With a shudder, "A kiss? Oh..." Kurt says wonderingly. "You don't have to... do that."

"Your cock is so pretty. I'd really like to," Blaine says. He settles down until he's so close he knows Kurt can feel his breath on his skin.

"Oh my god," Kurt mumbles, and he sounds just as shocked as he would were this the first time.

"Tell me, Kurt, please? I don't want to do anything you don't want. Do you want my mouth on you? "

"Yes, okay, _that_."

So Blaine kisses his cock with soft lips and a closed mouth; he kisses everywhere he can reach, slow and chaste. Savors the soft skin, the heat, and scent of Kurt, the inarticulate sounds Kurt's making, the tension growing in his thighs and his restless squirming hips, the way his belly hollows between each quick breath—the barely audible whine deep in his throat, and the way his hands grab so helplessly at the bedding.

"Blaine," Kurt finally gasps. Could you... Please?"

"Could I...?" Blaine prompts; he rubs his bottom lip against the sensitive notch of Kurt's frenulum.

Kurt huffs and grunts, Blaine moves his grip to hold Kurt's hips firmly against the bed, and he exhales across Kurt's dick. He needs Kurt to say it. He wanted, in his old fantasy, for Kurt—so innocent back then—to need him so badly, to be so lost to his lust, that he would give voice to the secret, powerful words that described his desire. It's different circumstances, but Blaine needs the same thing now.

"Kurt," Blaine soothes. "I don't want to assume. You have to tell me."

"Please, Blaine. Would you do... more? With your mouth?"

"More?" Blaine asks. "Like this?" He uses his tongue, licks up the underside of Kurt's cock, flattens his tongue over the head, and ends with a generous and wet, open-mouthed kiss.

Kurt's back arches. "Yes," he hisses, digging his fingers into the duvet like an ecstatic cat. "Ooh, more... like that."

But Blaine doesn't open his mouth wide enough to slide down over Kurt's cock. He continues with the kissing, only now with open lips and an eagerly exploring tongue. He takes his time, tasting Kurt with sucking kisses and curling licks, tracing the intimate topography of his cock, until Kurt is straining against the hold Blaine has on his hips, whimpering and panting.

"Christ," Kurt grits out, and he breaks from the shared fantasy to say, "You know I can't come like this."

But the disruption just makes Blaine grin. He stays with it. "Is that what you want? Do you want me to make you come?"

"Uh huh."

"Would you tell me how you want me to—?"

"For god's sake, Blaine," Kurt says, and one hand moves to Blaine's head, digs into his short hair for emphasis. "Just suck my cock."

The words are the exact thrill Blaine's been hoping for. He closes his eyes for a moment to savor them, and then he gives Kurt a cocky, "Your command is my wish."

Kurt gives him a _look_ , tugs his hair, and says with fond exasperation, "Come on."

So Blaine does. He sinks his mouth down over Kurt's cock with a happy hum, tries to feign a lack of skill, but his enthusiasm is all real. It doesn't take long, but he loves every precious second of it. Kurt comes hard, half sitting with both hands buried in Blaine's hair, swearing as his body seizes up. 

After, Kurt pulls Blaine up into his arms—with a breathless, "God, come up here with me, that was so hot, you're _so_ good,"—to kiss Blaine open-mouthed and sloppy, while he unzips Blaine's pants and jerks him off until Blaine comes all over Kurt's belly and himself.

"Holy hell," Kurt says, releasing Blaine's cock and sinking limply back into the bedding. Blaine rolls off him to strip himself out of his sweaty, rumpled clothes. He got semen on both his shirt and his pants. He grabs a handful of tissues from his nightstand and wipes up the mess on Kurt's torso. Kurt clumsily pulls his t-shirt off over his head.

"I can do some laundry before you go," Blaine offers, as he dabs at a splatter on Kurt's pants. "If you want to take these off? You can borrow something to wear. Or, um, I actually still have some of your clothes here."

"You just want me naked," Kurt says with a weary, crooked grin, but he wriggles out of his jeans and underwear obligingly.

Once they're both naked and relaxing on the bed, Kurt closes his eyes, and Blaine reaches for his hand. He'll take the clothes down to the laundry soon enough. He doesn't want to leave this moment just yet. They lie together with just the music washing over them and the push of warm air from the ceiling vent wafting across their cooling skin.

The playlist has moved on. Blaine sometimes wonders if his iPod shuffle reads his mind, though he tries not to attach too much significance to it. 

_"In our lighter moments  
precious few,_

_It's all that heavy weather  
We're going through." _

Kurt's breathing is slow and even, Blaine squeezes his hand and speaks not only to confess, but also to break the melancholy of the music settling over them. "That was actually pretty close to one of my very first sex fantasies about you. Thank you."

Opening his eyes, Kurt smiles, but the humor doesn't quite reach his eyes. A shadow has returned. "You never told me that one."

_"Nothing lasts forever  
Of that I'm sure."_

"At some point, it seemed a little redundant, you know?"

After a while, "I guess," Kurt says, and though gentle, his voice is colored by sadness. 

It sounds too much like regret. Blaine frowns. "Hey, what's wrong?"

Kurt retrieves his hand from Blaine and rolls away to sit up on the edge of the bed, his back to Blaine. He shoves both hands through his sex mussed hair. "I have no idea what I'm doing," Kurt admits.

Blaine looks at the ceiling, and he considers getting up to turn off the music. It may be the tangle of past and present is becoming too much for either of them to navigate with any grace. But the music has helped bring them here, so Blaine lets it play. He glances over at Kurt, so far away and looking so uncertain. Replies with a question, "Well, um, what are you trying to do?"

Kurt looks over his shoulder at Blaine. "I don't know. Maybe I'm still trying to get this out of my system. I thought I had at Christmas. I thought we were..." Kurt's lips twist around the next word like he hates the speaking of it. "Done."

"Is that...? Is that really what you want?"

Kurt is silent, turns his attention away.

"Maybe we're doing something new?" Blaine suggests, putting as much lightness and optimism into the words as he can.

"And what is that?" Distant—not cold, but sad.

"Do we need to label it something other than friendship?" Blaine asks.

"Just friends, Blaine?" It's brittle—and delivered with a sharp look back. "I know you believe we're more than that."

Blaine tries very hard not to flinch, and he bites back several of the things he wants to say, about what this means to him, and what he suspects it means to Kurt. What it means about them. But he knows none of it will help. What he needs to do is provide Kurt with whatever will make him feel most content and safe here. Which means this needs to be low pressure, easy. Fun. 

So Blaine doesn't say, they may be friends first, but that's not all they are. They're so much more than friends, and they always will be no matter what. Instead he says something he knows to be true, even if it's only a small part of it. "If that's what you want, Kurt. We _are_ friends. And we're having fun, right? Isn't that what you said Saturday?"

Kurt grins wryly and shakes his head like he doesn't believe Blaine. "Now who's trying to minimize this?"

Blaine rolls over and pushes up to his knees. He shuffles over to Kurt and puts his hands on his shoulders. "I'm serious. We're good together, you can't deny that any more than I can. We're really good at _sex_ together, so, you know, if we're both technically single and in the same place, then why not?" Blaine has to pause to take a fresh breath of air and fortify himself to say the next thing, "Hook up?"

"Why not," Kurt echoes, but not as a question. "You make it sound so simple."

"Maybe this can be?"

Kurt smiles, something weary in his gaze, and Blaine is heartened. "That would be nice," Kurt says. "To have something that's simple between us."

"I don't want you to regret this weekend, okay?"

Kurt presses his lips together and looks at his knees.

"You're the one who told me this kind of thing shouldn't hurt me," Blaine says. "It shouldn't hurt you either."

Kurt's breath catches and his eyelids slip down as he leans back into Blaine's hands. "It's actually kind of hard to imagine that," he whispers.

When Kurt's eyes open again, shimmering with unshed tears. Blaine is at a loss. He doesn't know what more to do or say. Wishes he could somehow let Kurt feel his heart, and feel Kurt's in return, so they could both truly know and understand. If he could do that, he could heal this pain between them, because Kurt would _know_ and there'd be no more doubt or fear. He reaches around and places his palm over Kurt's heart and pulls him back against his chest. Kurt comes into his arms without resistance. 

All Blaine has are his stupid same words, things he's said so many times, he knows they aren't enough, but all he can do is say them again. "Sweetheart, Kurt, I lo—"

"Please, don't say it." Kurt turns in his arms. 

"It's still true," Blaine says. 

Kurt shakes his head and takes Blaine by the shoulders, then he presses Blaine back onto the bed. "Maybe, but I want to do this with you anyway, and I'm so tired of thinking about it and talking about it." Kurt gathers up Blaine's wrists and pushes them over his head, but he releases them quickly and rests his hands upon Blaine's chest. Blaine opens his legs when Kurt steps between them with his knees.

Looking down at him, Kurt says, "Just... ask me for something I can give you? Something that's simple?" 

Blaine thinks of and rejects several sex related requests. There are many things he could ask for, but the things he wants most are not simple. If they're truly friends, then Blaine wants to take care of that friendship, too. "What time is your flight tomorrow?" he asks

"Afternoon. Why?"

"Then, would you consider staying tonight?"

Kurt frowns.

"We could clean up and go downstairs," Blaine says. He covers Kurt's hands with his own. "I'd love to make you dinner—I've been expanding my repertoire and I make this pretty amazing penne dish with kale and Italian sausage. It's better than anything on the Breadstix menu, anyway."

A slow smile spreads across Kurt's lips.

"And then we could see what's on the DVR, or bake some cookies. Mess around together on the piano, or go for a walk to enjoy the snow under the starlight—The Williams still have their Christmas lights up, they look amazing. Or, I don't know—we could play a game of checkers?"

Kurt's smile widens with amusement, and he raises an eyebrow. "You want to play checkers with me? Really?"

"It's a simple game, Kurt."

"I actually meant for you to ask me for a sex thing, Blaine," Kurt says, teasing, but there's something else in his voice, too: a trace of tenderness—and perhaps gratitude also.

"Yeah, well, we can do a sex thing later if you still want to. But as much as I miss and enjoy sex with you? There are other things I miss just as much, and since you're my best friend, and you're leaving tomorrow, don't you think we can expand on our options for tonight?"

Kurt relaxes. "You know what? You're right, and all of that really does sound like fun."


	15. Don't Bend, Don't Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set between 4x18 "Sweet Dreams" and 4x19 "Lights Out". Kurt wants so much more than nice. (In which Adam is nice guy, but it may come with scare quotes after all.) For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #15 Overture.
> 
> Title from the lyrics to Seal's "Love's Divine"
> 
> A grateful shout-out to the-multicorn for so patiently helping me fix up this story. <3 Any remaining flaws are not due to her diligence.

**Early Spring 2013**

The hollow clang of someone knocking on the loft door wakes Kurt. His head feels like someone's injected expanding foam insulation into his skull, and his eyelids feel glued shut. With a groan, he pulls his duvet over his head. Rachel will be up; she can deal with it. Then there's the muffled rumble-clank of the door and the low murmur of voices. He tucks his face into Bruce's shoulder and folds his spare pillow over his ear with his arm.

He's determinedly slipping down the deep, dark drift into unconsciousness again when a touch rouses him. His heart's in his throat before he's able to check himself. Someone pulls his pillow away. "Kurt?" It's Rachel. She doesn't sound anxious, more tentative. Not bad news, then. Kurt peeks out from under his duvet, blinking blearily at her as she comes into focus.

"What?" he rasps. "Who is it?"

"Adam's here," she says softly. Her lips are pulled askew into an apologetic grimace. "I told him you had a late night, but he said he wanted to see you."

"Oh god," Kurt mumbles into Bruce's chest. "He didn't call," he says. His phone's been on since the shooting Monday, as he’d promised Blaine it would be. Even after their conversation last night, he’s kept it on in case Blaine's needed to talk more, so Kurt wouldn't have missed a call or a text from Adam. "He didn't call," Kurt says again as if that can undo the fact Adam is standing in his living room and Kurt is in no way ready to see him.

"I think he was hoping to surprise you," Rachel says. "He has flowers."

"Flowers?" Kurt sighs; he'll have to get up. "Can you keep him company for a little while? I need to shower and get dressed."

Kurt pulls on his robe and finger combs his hair, but it's still an awkward trip across the loft to the bathroom so he can shower. Adam's brought him daisies that seem far too cheerful given the past week—as is Adam's smile, which Kurt does his best to return. (And isn't it too soon for daisies between them, anyway?) But Adam keeps smiling so very kindly, and Kurt had said they'd catch up on the weekend. Adam thought it might be nice to take him out to brunch this morning.

"Thank you," Kurt says of the flowers and to the brunch offer, but he also says, "I wish you'd called first. I'm not at my best."

"I don't mind," says Adam, as if that makes it all right. Kurt still minds though. It's not the most auspicious start to an impromptu date, but Adam keeps smiling, more indulgently now, as if Kurt's discomfort is the most endearing thing about him.

#

"Everything all right?" Adam asks him as they walk to the subway. The morning is sunny but an uncomfortable chill remains in the shadows of the buildings.

Kurt stops himself from a derisive snort or eye roll—and he really needs to get a handle on his bad mood, because Adam didn't come for the purpose of intruding or irritating. He came to cheer up his... Kurt can't bring himself to even think the word boyfriend. He likes Adam, but what they have doesn't feel remotely like _boyfriend_. "I was up late," Kurt says. "My Dad was on Fox news to talk about the new gun legislation he's proposing in the House, and—" Kurt slides a look at Adam, who's listening intently but who Kurt also knows tends to be disinterested in the minutiae of American politics. "It wasn't a great interview," Kurt finishes sourly.

"That's too bad," Adam says. "Honestly, I'll never understand your American obsession with guns."

"Not mine," Kurt says, resenting the generalization, but he forces himself to smile and aims for some levity: "Given that we had to violently overthrow your imperialistic tyranny, don't pretend like it isn't at least partially your fault." He bumps his shoulder against Adam's.

Adam laughs, Kurt relaxes, and they take the train to the restaurant.

#

Brunch is nice, except for the mangled fly corpse he finds lurking in his freshly squeezed orange juice. Kurt's head clears after several bitter refills of his bottomless coffee along with a plate of fried eggs, syrup drenched pancakes, and crispy bacon. His stomach settles, and his background sense of irritation smooths into enjoyment of the food, the warmth of the sunbeams reaching in the front window of the diner to angle across his shoulders, and Adam's company.

Adam doesn't ask anything more about the terrible events of the week. He seems receptive enough to it, leaves openings in the conversation (which is largely focused on catching Kurt up on the latest NYADA and Apples gossip) for Kurt to fill, but Kurt doesn't want to, and he appreciates that Adam isn't pushing him to talk. That's nice, too.

After their table is cleared and they've both contributed cash to paying the bill (Kurt has to insist that Adam not pay for him), Adam holds Kurt's coat for him to slip into. Somehow it strikes Kurt as more patronizing than polite, but he accepts Adam's attention. He's not sure why he so often resists it at first.

"So I was thinking," Adam says. "My place isn't far from here and my flatmates are gone for the day. My mum sent a care package with my _Blackadder_ box set, a couple packets of custard creams, and a tin of her ginger biscuits." He runs his palm down the lapel of Kurt's coat and gives Kurt a cajoling head tilt and hopeful smile. "Would you like to come over? Share them with me?"

It's tempting, but Kurt's first impulse is to decline. Last night—the sleepy and overly emotional blur that it is—intrudes. Not the interview from the television, but the later phone conversation with Blaine. Going to Adam's apartment with the understanding that Adam is still wanting their relationship to grow into a full-fledged romance when Kurt's even more unsure of what he wants here— Is he being dishonest? Even if it's true that he'll never feel about Adam the way he does about Blaine. Is that a reason to decline? Blaine and Adam are different people, and he's only known Adam a matter of months. Years he's shared with Blaine, and a plan for all the years to come. It was never not going to be different.

And so, maybe love is irrevocably different every time. Maybe he needs to give this thing with Adam a real chance. Maybe falling in love as an adult is a different process. Maybe he can choose it? Maybe he can't. But how is he supposed to know if he doesn't try? And Adam's friendship alone is valuable. Even if they never fall in love, he wants this connection, wants to find how he belongs in this city, in this life he’s building, with new friends and community. He's been so preoccupied with Blaine, he hasn't really been present with Adam, who—Kurt is determined—isn't a rebound. Adam is Adam: sweet, handsome, funny—and he has biscuits and Britcoms.

In his silence, Adam speaks again, "Look, I won't be offended if you fall asleep on the sofa. My flat's sunny and quiet. I just thought you could use a break from your own four walls."

Kurt shakes off his ambivalence and nods. "Yeah, yeah, you're right. That sounds really nice."

"Fantastic!" Adam says, and he offers Kurt his bent elbow to take.

#

"So would you like the grand tour?" Adam asks as he unlocks his apartment door. Five flights of stairs have Kurt's legs feeling leaden, and his full stomach has absconded with all the blood that might benefit his brain.

"Okay," Kurt says, and shrugs off his coat. He's warm from exertion, but his face is still cold from the wind.

Inside, Adam's apartment is cramped, full of mismatched furniture. A couch and loveseat are squeezed into a tiny living area, draped in colorful crocheted throws and assorted accent cushions. A card table with three seventies-vintage chairs straddles the carpet and linoleum divide between the compact living room and the even tinier kitchen. But it smells clean and it's bright and warm. Framed classic film posters hang on an exposed brick wall.

"So, as you can see, this is the grand foyer, parlor, conservatory, kitchen, dining room, ball room, and study all in one. You have to appreciate the efficiency of the design." Adam says, gesturing grandly. "To find an apartment with all of these features."

Kurt laughs.

"And here's the coat check," Adam says, taking Kurt's coat and hanging from a hook on the back of the door. "Because we're very fancy here."

"Do I get a claim ticket?" Kurt asks.

"Yes, you do," Adam says with a grin. He leans in to kiss Kurt briefly on the lips; his lips are smooth and cool. "Just return that when it's time to go."

"All right then," Kurt whispers, and Adam steps back.

"Let me show you the rest."

The rest is nothing more than the blue-tiled bathroom and Adam's bedroom. His roommates' bedroom door is closed. At the door of Adam's room, Kurt hesitates to enter, but Adam beckons to him. Kurt steps in and Adam reaches for his hand.

"You know, we could always have a nap together if you're tired?" Adam says, inclining his head toward the bed. It's made neatly, two pillows, two shams, and a soft looking quilt. A fluffy fleece blanket is folded in a loose rectangle at the foot of it. Kurt's gaze slips to the nightstand, imagines there's a box of condoms in its top drawer.

"Hmm?" Adam prompts him, and he touches Kurt, pushes a hand into Kurt's hair, messing up the morning's efforts, and he kisses Kurt. Not chaste like the kiss at the door but warm and opening, seeking entrance to Kurt's mouth. It feels nice, the warmth of Adam's open mouth, Adam's fingertips massaging his scalp, Adam's lips moving against his. Adam's other hand comes to rest at Kurt's waist and his thumb strokes Kurt's belly. Even through the layers of clothing Kurt wears, it feels terribly intimate. Adam is warm and he smells good. A trace of vanilla always clings to him, makes him smell like he's been baking. It's cozy.

But Kurt's pretty sure that 'have a nap together' is a proposition for making out on the bed, most likely with the hope of it leading to sex.

When he's able, Kurt replies, "Not right now, I really want to watch some _Blackadder_ and try your Mom's cookies."

"Sure," Adam says, smiling, but Kurt catches the shadow of disappointment in his eyes.

#

On the loveseat together, they watch _Blackadder_. Kurt's not focusing well on the story, and the comedy isn't catching him the way he likes it to. Beside him Adam is close, one arm wrapped around Kurt's shoulder, loosely holding Kurt against him. Which should be comforting and comfortable, but the flicker in Adam's gaze in the bedroom has made it hard for Kurt to relax into the notion of sharing the afternoon in an easy friendly manner. He knows Adam wants more than friendly, has been working them toward more, and today it seems like whatever hope Adam has is not for some hypothetical scenario yet to come, but for now.

"You're tense," Adam observes, and he shifts behind Kurt to get a hold on Kurt's shoulders, starts massaging his neck and shoulder with gentle pressure. It feels nice, but Kurt cannot relax. Is this foreplay? Or can he give himself over to Adam's hands and trust that he won't be asked for something more? Is the worry all in his head, ridiculous anxiety or guilt over his own behavior and doubts? Adam's been so sweet to him.

"It's been a long week," Kurt says, and he wills the tension from his body.

"I know, sweetheart, but it's over now. Your friends are okay, you're here with me. You can relax." The last is punctuated with a kiss to the side of his neck, just below his ear. It lands right in the spot that makes his spine feel like warm jelly.

But before Kurt can rally himself enough to find a way to politely ask Adam not to call him _sweetheart_ , Kurt's phone bleeps with a text—like some kind of intercession from the universe to save him from this increasingly awkward situation. Kurt excuses himself. He sits up and pulls away from Adam, reaches into his pocket and slips out his phone.

It's from Blaine. Before he taps the text to read it, Kurt takes a deep breath and stands up. "I'll need to reply to this," Kurt says.

Adam's hand is still on his back. "That text is from Blaine," he says neutrally.

"Yes," Kurt says. "He's had a long week too. Excuse me."

#

Kurt steps into the bathroom; it seems the most private space.

"Are we OK this morning?" reads Blaine's text.

Kurt bites his lip against the pang in his chest. "Yes," he types. "Always."

"I'm glad," comes Blaine reply. "May I call you?"

"Not a good time," Kurt replies. "Out with a friend. I'll call you when I get home?"

"OK," Blaine writes. "Going to a movie this afternoon with S & T, can you call after dinner?"

"Yes. Hi to Sam and Tina. Have fun!" Kurt chews his lip and tries to think of more to say to Blaine, in case Blaine's still needing reassurance. But he can't think of anything, and he's here to spend time with Adam. He can't stay in the bathroom texting his ex.

#

"Everything all right?" Adam asks him from the kitchen as Kurt returns to the living room, pocketing his phone.

"Yeah, I think so," Kurt says. "We were up late talking last night..." Kurt trails off at the heat crawling up his neck. It makes him feel like he’s confessing a misdeed to Adam. But the time he takes for Blaine isn’t wrong, and it’s not a betrayal of Adam to still be intimate with Blaine, even if their relationship isn’t easily bound by the phrase _‘just friends’_. Blaine will always be something more to Kurt. "Um, about the shooting," Kurt explains. "He just wanted to talk some more today. I’ll call him back later."

"Oh," Adam says, getting a plate and two mugs from the cupboard. "It's nice that you can still be there for him. He's very lucky." There's no sarcasm in Adam's tone, but Kurt still finds himself bristling at the words. It makes it sound like Kurt's caring for Blaine is something more than Blaine deserves. From an open tin, Adam places some cookies on the plate.

"It's not about me being nice," Kurt says. He catches the buttery sweet scent of the cookies, the hint of ginger and spice. "He's still my best friend."

"Like I said, he's lucky," Adam says, not unkindly. He flashes Kurt a smile and unwraps a pair of teabags from their paper envelopes and puts one in each mug, and then he pours hot water from an electric kettle into them. "Will you come back to the lounge and join me?"

"Yeah," Kurt says. Somehow it feels like they avoided an argument, but he's not sure about what exactly. Adam's never been jealous of Blaine before.

But before Adam presses play on the DVD, he turns to Kurt, and he asks, "How long have we been dating?"

"Um," Kurt says. Maybe he hasn't dodged a difficult conversation after all. "Are we counting the first coffee we had together in January?"

"Let's count it."

"Almost four months," Kurt says. "But it's been casual for most of it, right?"

"And what is it now, Kurt, if it's not still casual?"

"Adam, you know I like you, but I'm just not—"

"You're not ready, I know, you always say that." Adam’s smile is too fixed for Kurt to wholly believe it. "But it's true that you slept with Blaine when you went home, isn’t it?"

"That was—"

"Look, Kurt, I'm completely sympathetic to the attraction of an ex, and I know you and Blaine had a serious relationship. But have you considered that maybe I need you too, and it's not making you happy being caught between us. I want more than this with you, you know that. I want more of you. I've been very patient. You told me you wanted to be over him, but you don't seem to be trying very hard."

"You have been...very patient, and I'm grateful. And... I have been trying," Kurt says. "I don't honestly know what more I can give you right now. Your friendship matters too much to me for me to want to risk rushing into something I'm not ready for."

Adam considers him for a long pause. "You know what I think?" Adam asks, and he doesn't wait for Kurt to answer before he continues. "I think you are ready, but you're right, you’re scared."

"I didn't say I was scared," Kurt says, "And what happened to you being okay taking things slowly? I'm not ready for serious or exclusive—or sex."

"Four months has been slow enough, don't you agree? I didn't say we had to be exclusive, but I would like this to be more than a friendship with a romantic facade."

"That’s—" Kurt frowns in confusion and starts over. "Adam, I'm..." Kurt draws a shaky breath and makes himself be as clear as he possibly can be. He closes his eyes and speaks softly. "Adam, I'm not in love with you," he says, and though he feels profoundly sad speaking the words, Kurt won't apologize for them.

"Okay," Adam says slowly; and Kurt opens his eyes to find Adam is still smiling, unfazed by Kurt's confession. "But I think that's because you're still keeping me at a distance. If you want to give us a real chance, Kurt, then we need to share more than television shows and NYADA gossip with each other. Frankly, I don't understand why you're so scared of having sex with me."

"I'm not scared," Kurt says.

"You don't need to be," Adam says. "If you'd let me take you to bed, then you'd see how good we can be together. I'll make you feel good, Kurt." Adam laughs and continues, "And what better way to recover from the stress of your week than having a good, head-clearing fuck?"

That's enough that Kurt’s cheeks warm. "It's not that I don't appreciate the value of... that. I just don't want to be intimate with someone I'm not in love with," Kurt says. (And there it is, the explicit confirmation for Adam—and for himself—as if either of them needed it: Kurt is still in love with Blaine.)

Adam shakes his head and smiles. "Sometimes I forget how young you are. If you think sex can only be valuable when you're in love? Sometimes it's part of the way we get to know each other and part of the way we fall in love. And sometimes, it's just nice to be close with another person."

"Maybe for you, and maybe for other people," Kurt says. "But that's not how I work." And he knows for sure he wants more than nice. He wants so much more than that: he wants sanctuary and connection—he wants love.

"How do you even know? You have so little experience," Adam says, and there's enough of a hint of condescension, Kurt frowns. "You've slept with one boy, whom you loved desperately, and who betrayed you and broke your heart—"

"Don't even think about trying to tell me how I should feel about any of that."

"I'm not. All I'm saying is that your previous formula clearly didn't work for you. Maybe you should try something else? Try me? Loosen up and let yourself have some fun with me, Kurt. Let's get to know each other better. Sex doesn't have to mean everything every time."

"Adam, " Kurt says, and he stands up. "One thing I'm sure of—and it's something you should understand about me by now if you genuinely care to know me. I'm not too young to know my own mind. I never have been. And I'm going to go."

"Kurt—" Adam stands as well, and he follows Kurt.

Kurt doesn't turn back to face Adam as he takes his coat off the back of the door. "If you want to be my friend, give me a call, but," Kurt has to pause to breathe and swallow the tear flavored lump that rises in his throat. He's not going to let his voice betray his emotion. And he hopes he doesn't regret the words he's about to say. All he knows for sure is that he's so tired, and this isn't how he wants things to be with Adam. "I don't think I can be your boyfriend."


	16. I'll Be Looking at the Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set sometime around 3x12 "Naked" and immediately following "[And I Breathe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1086978)". Blaine's surprised when Kurt texts him after his first date with Adam. It didn't go how Kurt expected. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #16 Pulse.
> 
> Title from the classic, "I'll Be Seeing You" performed by various awesome peeps; I was listening to James Darren's cover.

_No one is waiting up for Blaine when he gets home several minutes past his curfew. He heads straight to the shower and then to bed. In the dark he gropes for the end of his phone charger, to plug his phone in for the night. It blinks with a new text notification. Ten minutes old, it's from Kurt. Blaine hesitates before opening it._

_"Are you awake?" it reads._

_Blaine takes a deep, painless breath and then exhales all of it. He types back, "Yes."_

=

"Hi. :)" 

That's Kurt's reply. 

"Okay," Blaine says to the room. He stares at the text smiley; tries to discern its subtext. It's too simple to take at face value given it's been Kurt's first date with Adam. That Kurt's come home alone seems a reasonable assumption. The smiley, though—did it go well? Is he calling to gush over the wonderful perfect New York dream date he had with Adam? Doubtful Kurt would be so insensitive—or even comfortable—doing so.

Which means what? He wants to talk to Blaine because he's been in a romantic disposition tonight and feels nostalgic? Or does he just want to tell Blaine about the show he saw? Or? Is this how they work now, as friends?

He's overthinking it. A simple overture of friendliness shouldn't be this fraught between them, even tonight. Blaine keeps his reply as simple. He won't pretend to know things he doesn't. That's got him into enough trouble. "Hi. :) Did you want to call & talk?"

"I don't want to wake Rachel. Is texting OK?"

"Ofc," Blaine types, sends, and then—before he has a chance to censor himself--types the most obvious question to get it out of the way, "How was your date?" He makes himself smile through it, even though Kurt can't see him.

A few minutes pass, and Blaine looks at the photos on his nightstand. Kurt with him, Kurt alone: Kurt looking back at him, smiling, in love. _In love with him_. In this room, once, in love together. Blaine exhales the tension that wants to gather behind his eyes. This bed is his own making.

And thinking on that trite-but-true old metaphor, the particular cruelty of his own self-inflicted heartbreak, Blaine doesn't want to continue this conversation in his bedroom, with the good memories of them staring him down in the bed in which they made love, so he gets up. Goes back downstairs, and into the music room. Memories of Kurt linger here too--some he wishes to avoid for now--but he has many more memories of other times. Being on his own, with music: his own audience and company. Practicing and learning and feeling proud. 

Enough light comes in the windows, he doesn't bother with a lamp. Sits at the piano, with his quiet phone. The fallboard covers the keys. Blaine resists raising it to distract his hands and mind; instead he types another tet to Kurt. "You don't have to answer." Blaine sends. "I'm sorry if that was inappropriate."

Kurt's reply comes shortly after that. "It's fine, I texted you first." And then after another handful of seconds: "I was overdressed."

Blaine frowns, fidgets with his phone. He's unsure what to make of that. "Was it a problem? Being overdressed?"

"Dinner and a show turned out to be Cajun pizza and an improv club."

"That sounds fun?"

"It was fun, but not what I dressed for."

"What did you wear?"

"I'll show you," Kurt replies. 

After a couple minutes, Blaine gets a photo: Kurt in front of his mirror. The lighting's warm and bright enough Blaine can appreciate the striking jacket Kurt wears. It's got a bold black and white tessellating pattern that resembles stained glass windows or elaborate tile work. The cut of the jacket is perfection on Kurt, trim and classic with neat pagoda shoulders. Kurt's wearing it with black tuxedo trousers, a white shirt, and a black bow tie with a small silver chain.

"Wow. That's from the new McQueen collection, right?" Blaine types.

"Yes! Isabelle let me borrow it. Amazing, right? I wish I could show you the detail better. I'm in love with this jacket, I swear."

"It's gorgeous," Blaine replies, because Kurt is. "You look incredible, Kurt. I love your bow tie."

"Thank you."

Blaine smiles (so he sends a smiley, ":D" ), and he wonders if Kurt's smiling too. He hopes he is. He loves Kurt's smile when he gets a well deserved compliment on his appearance.

"How's my Dad been this week?" Kurt sends after a while. "He never wants to tell me much about his treatments."

 _Is that why you texted me tonight? To ask about your Dad?_ Blaine types, but he stares at the message and doesn't send it. Without conversational tone, it may come off as bitter or confrontational, and he's neither. He just wants to know why. He's deleting it when Kurt's next text arrives.

"I sent some tea that's meant to help with his energy. Do you know if he's drinking it?"

"I'll ask him next time I see him." Blaine says, and then sends also, "He's doing well though. I saw him earlier tonight and he was in a great mood."

"Thank you, Blaine."

"You're welcome," Blaine replies, because he can't think of anything else that would be better in the moment. He can't tell Kurt that he's more than happy to do this, that he doesn't require Kurt's thanks. It's a promise he's keeping, and he loves Kurt's family. But he doesn't want Kurt to think he's doing any of this to ply Kurt's heart for forgiveness.

"So how's your evening been?" Kurt sends. 

_I went to Scandals and realized I'm still in love with you and I'm okay with that_ , is what Blaine wants to type. Instead he sends, "It was fine." But looking at the words on his screen while waiting for Kurt's reply, Blaine frowns. It's too perfunctory and dismissive, and Kurt must want to keep talking or he would've said good night by now. His date was disappointing, that much seems safe to assume. So Blaine tries to be a little bit braver. "I was thinking about you and hoping you had a good time with Adam."

It's a while before Blaine gets a response: "I did." He wonders what other options Kurt may've typed and discarded.

"Why does it feel like there's a 'but' there?" Blaine sends.

"I don't know," Kurt replies, and Blaine can imagine his sigh of frustration. "I'm sorry if this is awkward. I know we talked about talking about this stuff, but actually talking about it?"

Blaine laughs despite himself. "It's okay. I care about you more than this is awkward. We can talk if it helps."

"Okay," Kurt replies, but that's all Blaine gets.

"So your date wasn't what you expected," Blaine says. "But you had a good time?"

"Yes. I had a great time."

"Do you want to see him again?"

"I think so."

"But?"

"But seriously, I don't know if I'm feeling the way I'm supposed to be feeling. I keep comparing it to how I felt about you when we were starting out, and it's different. I don't know if it's supposed to be or what it means that it is."

"I wouldn't worry about supposed to. You feel how you feel." Blaine replies, hopes that doesn't sound weirdly passive aggressive or anything. 

"Maybe."

Blaine stares at Kurt's 'maybe' and tries his best to channel friendship and support and wisdom of some kind without getting himself too hopelessly tangled up in his own heart. "We knew each other for months before we started dating. We were already friends."

"True. I don't know him very well yet. Maybe I'm expecting too much too soon."

Blaine isn't sure how to advise Kurt, how much of whatever advice he might give would come from his own abiding desire for reconciliation. He doesn't want to sabotage Kurt, but nor does he want to overcompensate and give poor or insincere advice. "It's okay to take it slow," Blaine types. "We did."

"Yeah."

Blaine holds his phone, and he knows he can't stop the emotion that wells up in response to the memories that rouse, so he doesn't try. "Are you okay?" he asks.

"I don't know. After having my first date in NY not be what I'd dreamed of, I've been thinking."

"About?" Blaine prompts.

"About how I always do this."

Confused, Blaine asks, "Always do what?"

"Make it all up in my head. I had such a clear idea of how I wanted tonight to be. And it was nothing like it, and I was actually mad about that for a little while. Which wasn't fair to Adam. It made me wonder if I'd done the same thing to you."

Blaine frowns, types, and sends, "I don't understand."

It's a while before he gets Kurt's reply: "After you told me you cheated on me. I didn't know who you were, because my Blaine would never have done that. You looked the same, but you were a stranger."

Blaine presses his lips together and tips his head back. His vision blurs and he swallows hard. More reminders of things he can't fix. His phone vibrates with another text: "When you came at Christmas, I recognized you again, but you still seemed different. You were you, but I saw you differently."

"Kurt," Blaine says out loud. These are things they need to talk about maybe, but he doesn't know how. And some things are too hard to hear from Kurt, even though he knows they're true, knows the pain of them is his own doing, knows Kurt isn't saying things to hurt him or punish him, but just because Kurt needs to say them. Or wants Blaine to know. The least he can do is listen.

"Are you still there?" Kurt asks.

"I'm still here."

"On the way home on the train, I realized that maybe I'd made up a version of you in my head and a version of our relationship that weren't real? I was so in love with the idea of you that I hadn't really looked at you and seen you the way I should have. I thought I had, but, maybe not."

"Oh, Kurt," Blaine whispers to himself. He can't stop the tears this time, doesn't try. Wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his robe, and reads the next text.

"Instead I was caught in this fantasy of having found my fairy tale prince and daydreaming all our happily ever afters. But reality was different, you were different, and I maybe I didn't see that."

Kurt's next text comes before Blaine can even start thinking about starting a reply. Kurt must be typing furiously, to get out the whole thought. Blaine sniffs wetly, and reads: "Maybe I was so in love with the idea of being in love instead of being in love with you the way I should have been. Maybe I don't really know you as well as I thought I did. Maybe I never really knew you at all."

It's not a good conversation for texts. But Blaine stares at Kurt's words, realizes what it must have taken Kurt to write all of it tonight. Knows he needs to say the right thing, but he has no idea what that is. He does his best. "I wanted to be your fairy tale prince. I wanted those happy endings with you, Kurt. I'm the one who fucked it up, not you."

"But if I truly knew you then I would've understood you better. I would've been a better boyfriend and you wouldn't have done it."

"What happened isn't your fault," Blaine types, robotically. He can't let himself feel all of this.

"Are you really telling me that there's nothing I could have done differently that would've made you not want to cheat on me?"

"I don't know," Blaine says. "I can't know that, and there's no point wondering about how things could've been when it's done. I don't think I can do this with you right now, Kurt. I'm sorry."

No reply from Kurt. 

"Okay?" Blaine asks.

"Okay," Kurt replies. Follows up with a longer text. "I still miss you," Kurt sends. "So much sometimes. I missed you a lot tonight, and I wasn't supposed to be thinking about you at all. I want to give this thing with Adam a chance, because I really like him and he likes me. But I don't know what I'm doing. Maybe it's too soon and this is doomed from the start. I don't want to make the same mistakes."

"I miss you too," Blaine replies, grateful that they're not actually on the phone, so he can choose not to reply to everything Kurt's text is laden with. "I was thinking about you tonight too. It's going to happen, that we think about each other like this."

"Maybe I shouldn't have said all of this to you tonight."

"It's okay to say it if it's how you feel."

"It is how I feel, but I don't know that it's okay to say it all to you. I don't know if it's fair. I don't like not knowing how to talk to you about things. I miss talking to you though."

"Me too. I'm sorry this is hard."

"I know." And then. "Was it wrong for me to text you tonight? Are *you* okay?"

"I'm okay," Blaine says. For some values of 'okay' it's true. Hard though it is, Kurt did text and they are talking. It's nice--and it reminds Blaine, not in the specific, but in some ineffeable spirit of human intimacy, of the midnight text conversations they had back before Kurt transferred to Dalton.

"Okay, then so am I," Kurt sends and Blaine knows, without seeing, that Kurt's smiling too. 

There's a long gap of no communication then. Blaine scrolls back up to the photograph of Kurt. His face is partially blocked by his phone; Blaine can only see the edge of his mouth and one eye. But it's enough. "I just hope you got a decent compliment on that outfit tonight," Blaine writes. 

Kurt replies, "I did get one. Eventually. :)"

"So is it a good evening after all?"

"It is," Kurt sends, and adds, "I'm going to go to bed now. It's late. Thanks for talking to me."

"Anytime. I mean it."

"I'll call you sometime when it's not so late?"

"Sure," Blaine types. Then, "Good night, Kurt. Sleep well."


	17. A Tangle With Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 4x09 "Swan Song". After singing at the Winter Showcase for his second NYADA audition, the first person Kurt wants to call is Blaine. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #17 Quick.
> 
> Title from Seal's "I'm Alive".

After the winter showcase performances, the audience, faculty and students, and the performers file from the round room to a reception hall up the stairs. Mingling ensues. Kurt mostly loses track of Rachel, catches a glimpse here and there of her radiant face. Mostly ends up jostled about in the crowd of human turbulence. Recognizing some faces, forgetting names. Trying, still, not to cry.

Kurt's heart is too big in his chest, like someone's pumped it with helium and it's about to burst free of his body and go sailing off into the sky. But it's staying put for now, though it still feels misplaced in his body, as if it's somehow lodged itself high in his esophagus during its escape attempt. It pumps and flutters too rapidly, stuck fast and uncomfortably near the base of his throat. No matter how he tries, he can't swallow it down. It's hard to breathe around it.

Brody appears at his elbow and hands him a glass of champagne with a wink and a friendly clap on the shoulder. Kurt makes some vocal approximation of, "Thank you." Alcohol may not be the wisest choice, but maybe it'll calm him down. He takes a sip. It's weirdly yeasty and more bitter than sparkling cider, but he doesn't make a face. He blinks through his blurry vision and smiles as he spies Mme. Tibideaux approaching him.

She speaks to him, warm and formal, and he curtsies reflexively--awkwardly--makes sure he thanks her (too effusively, he knows, but he can't dam the words of gratitude), and he laughs at himself and his peculiar excesses while she smiles her indulgent knowing smile at him. With grace and deliberation, she leads him around the room and introduces him to people whose names he does his best to remember. He blinks rapidly to clear the moisture from his eyes. He's not at risk of crying any longer, it's just--his eyes won't stop leaking. His heart jitters, and, as he moves, his limbs feel stiff and ill-arranged, like he's only just been born, some awkward precocious mammal learning his own legs for the first time. But he's on best behavior, remembers his please's and thank you's and it's-a-pleasure-to-meet-you's. It's all bit of a blur, but it's a happy one. 

Happy. Just last week Blaine told him he sounded happy, and he wasn't sure he was, or if he could be. Or if he even understood what happy meant. But today, tonight, right now, the clouds have parted. He's alive and hopeful. That feels like happiness must.

But the noise and people and the champagne combine to make his head uncomfortably muzzy. Once Mme. Tibideaux leaves him, he excuses himself from a conversation with Brody and one of Mme. Tibideaux's TA's, and steps out onto an abandoned balcony. 

It overlooks a dormant winter garden. Tidy beds of mulch wait for spring's pansies and petunias. It's quiet--relatively. He can still hear the urban white noise of traffic: engines and horns and tires on asphalt. He finds a low wooden bench and sits. Beneath his backside it's cold. He curls his fingers around the edge of the seat either side of his legs. The bleed of the cold through his clothes is welcome. Forces his attention more into his body, makes him feel more aware and integrated. His heart reseats itself as he breathes, deep and easy.

Until he starts laughing, softly, impulsively, just because. Even if he doesn't get in... this _is_. Tonight happened. The urge to cry again swells within him, joyful, but too much. He gasps for steady breaths and swallows his giddy laughter. Calms. 

And abruptly feels alone. Not lonely. He doesn't want to go back inside yet, but the pull deep in his gut, he knows it. He wants to tell Blaine about what's happened: how he sang for this august crowd, how they applauded him. How he was terrified of falling and managed to fly. How sudden and strange the night has been. It's too soon to feel vindicated or celebratory. It's too unreal and unresolved. Telling Blaine may soothe that odd sense of disconnection, and Blaine will share his elation. Blaine will be proud and happy. He might even cry too; Kurt aches to talk to him.

But he hesitates and queries the wisdom of the impulse. Maybe his Dad should be his first call tonight. Except he'd rather not wake his Dad and get his hopes up. Would rather know something for sure. He'll tell his Dad in an email without making it out to be a big deal. Just let him know he got to audition again. There's no big news to report until he finds out if he's been successful. 

Still, he feels successful now. A standing ovation, before this audience? He's going to wake up any moment now. He pinches himself, his thigh along the seam of his pants. Feels it in his body, but not in his mind, which remains incredulous and bubbling with little bursts of too many competing feelings.

Reaches into his trouser pocket for his pocket watch, doesn't look at the time though. Holds it upside down and runs his thumb over the butterflies engraved on the back. Even before they were boyfriends or lovers, Blaine would have been his first call after something like this. 

So Kurt dries his eyes and sniffs back the threat of tears, swaps the watch for his phone and scrolls to his recent calls, taps Blaine's name.

_Ring... Ring... Ring... Ring..._

"Hello, this is Blaine's phone," someone not Blaine answers. It's a masculine voice.

"Um," Kurt says slowly, because his lips have gone clumsy with shock. Who would have Blaine's phone at this hour? It's definitely not Blaine's father's voice. Nor Cooper's. Cautiously, Kurt asks, "Hello?"

"Hey, Kurt, it's Sam."

"Oh," Kurt says, and his brain connects the voice to the person. He lets out a long breath, his anxiety sinks back down, and his chest warms with relief and recognition. "Hi, Sam. Is Blaine there?"

"No, sorry. He left his phone in my room charging, I'll get it back to him in the morning."

"Okay," Kurt says. Didn't know Blaine and Sam were hanging out that much. 

"I can take a message for him if you want?"

Kurt remembers some of the things Tina's told him in recent weeks. "A vice presidential duty?"

"Nah, I saw your name, and knew he wouldn't want your call going to voice mail."

"Oh," Kurt says, pleased. "Thank you."

"So can I take a message?" Sam asks.

"Um, not really? It's something I want to tell him myself."

Sam's response is an incomprehensible muffled sound. It may've been a word or words. He may've lost his grip on the phone.

"Hm?" Kurt says. "What's that?"

A rustle on the line, and then Sam asks more clearly, "I was wondering if it's a good thing or a bad thing you want to tell him?"

Taken aback, Kurt blinks. "This isn't twenty questions."

"No, I know. But maybe you don't know?"

That's cryptic; Kurt frowns. "Don't know what?"

"Blaine's had a really rough month or so, and he's only just starting to smile again, so if it's bad news? Can you be gentle with him? I'm just trying to look out for him, all right?"

"Right," Kurt says slowly. He begins to wonder, but stops himself. Just clarifies, "It's not bad news." Then he adds, with a quick grin stealing control of his lips, irrepressible, "Quite the opposite." And the next words well up, buoyed by that joy: he wants to tell someone who knows him and who'll care. "I got a second audition for NYADA tonight, and it went really, really well."

"Oh! That's awesome, Kurt. Congratulations, dude!"

"Don't get too excited, I'm not in yet," Kurt says, "So I'm not celebrating yet, but-- It's definitely good news."

"Yeah, well, good luck and stuff."

"I'll need it," Kurt says, huffs a laugh. "And, hey, Sam? Blaine was the first person I wanted to tell, so please don't tell him before I can?"

"My lips are sealed," Sam says.

"I appreciate it."

"So I'm really the first person you've told?" Sam says.

"Aside from Rachel," Kurt says, "Yeah, I guess you are."

"Cool," Sam says. 

Awkward silence follows. Kurt can count on less than one finger the number of times he's held a conversation with Sam on the phone for more than a few practical minutes. "I guess I should go then, let you go back to sleep. Sorry for how late this is."

"It's cool," Sam says. "I was reading."

Kurt nods. "Then I'll let you get back to that."

"Okay," Sam says, and Kurt hears him take a breath like he's got something else to say. So Kurt waits a beat. "And Kurt?" Sam asks.

"Yeah?"

"Um. Blaine told me what he did."

"Oh. Uh... I don't want to talk about--"

"No, no, that's not my place. But I just wanted to say that I know what he did was really bad, and I know--I get that it's... Um. I'm not judging anyone or, like, taking sides. I know he hurt you, but I hope you know that he's not a bad person, right? He's a good person who did a bad thing. He's not a villain. He's one of the good guys, one of the best I know."

Tightness seizes in Kurt's throat, seems to stop the beat of his heart. The burning prickle of tears returns. Kurt swallows. "Yeah," Kurt says, feels his smile wobble with some strange melange of sadness and gratitude. It's not new information to his heart. It's nice that Sam cares. Softly he affirms, "I know that."

"Cool, okay then, I'll see you later, Kurt. Take care."

"You too," Kurt says. He ends the call and slips his phone back into his breast pocket.

He sits still in the cold nighttime, breathing and waiting for the crying urge to pass. Holds the tension in his chest as if he can crush it down to nothing. But then he wonders, why? Why hold it in? So he cries, not hard or noisily, but without trying to stop it. He puts his pocket square to use catching his tears. It's some strange soul deep relief, and it's not just the one thing. It's so much, like the world just changed its tilt. He's not sure what's next, but he's not--for the first time in a long time--wretchedly miserable underneath it all. Happiness lingers with hope. He blinks back the tears, wipes his eyes, stands, Clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. One clear breath clears his mind. 

There's still a tightness in his chest. It's familiar. Fear, a little bit (or a lot), but that's not a new thing. Sadness still of course--grief is process--but he's learning that maybe this is an inescapable feature of life. To have had something good in life, means accepting the pain of it passing. It may not be a good deal or a fair deal, but it is the only deal. So, it's time to step forward to find the next good thing.

Maybe he'll get into NYADA, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll be able to forgive Blaine one day-- 

Either way, he's got this.


	18. So Strange Are the Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set over episodes 4x04 "The Break Up" and 4x05 "The Role You Were Born to Play". Blaine returns to Ohio after confessing his infidelity to Kurt in New York. Kurt won't reply to his phone calls and texts. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #18 River. 
> 
> Title from The Tea Party's "Heaven Coming Down".

The landing gear touches down with a terminal double _thud_ that reverberates in the freshly carved space within Blaine's chest. He's back in Ohio, and it's done. 

Blaine texts Kurt shortly after the plane lands, as soon as the flight attendant tells them they may use their cell phones. The distance yawns deep and pulls taut between here and New York, where he left his heart. It may be still attached to him, but barely. It's up to Kurt to sever whatever strand of affection may yet bind them; Blaine has done enough damage. He isn't hopeful that Kurt won't, for hope in the aftermath of telling Kurt, it's... He doesn't know what it is. 

Kurt doesn't reply to his text, but then Blaine doesn't expect him to. He can't expect something just because he wants it. At least silence is better than some other things; Blaine tries to convince himself.

His bag feels like it's twenty pounds heavier when he hauls it out of the overhead compartment. He nearly clocks himself in the head.

His mother meets him. Blaine didn't expect her to, thought he would be getting a cab home.

As she greets him, her smile is as it always is, familiar and a little forced, as if she's still not sure if she's meant to smile at him. He's never understood it, but he's grateful to see her. 

"Hi, Mom," Blaine says.

She cocks her head, her smile turning to a moue of concern. "You had a good flight?"

"Yes."

She fusses uselessly with the collar of his cardigan and blinks rapidly. He knows how she worries when he flies. "This gray doesn't suit you, darling. It makes you look tired."

"I am tired," Blaine says. Her eyebrows draw together just enough to make a line, but she doesn't respond as she turns toward the direction of the escalator. He's grateful for her lack of inquiry, even as a bitterness spreads on the back of his tongue. She has no idea, and he can't tell her what's happened, because then he'll have to tell her why, and--

"How's Kurt?" she asks, more brightly now, walking half a step ahead of him and glancing back over her shoulder.

She's fond of Kurt; he definitely can't tell her what he did. "Um," Blaine starts. "He's enjoying working at Vogue dot com," Blaine replies. "His boss thinks he has a promising future there."

"That's wonderful to hear," his mother says. "I'm sure you're proud of him."

"Yes, of course," Blaine says. He slips his fingertips into his pocket to touch the silent stillness of his phone. He forgot to tell Kurt.

.

In the car, Blaine sends Kurt another text: "There are some things I wanted to say to you before I left but I didn't get the chance. Can we talk?" His fingers twitch wanting to add another 'I'm sorry' or 'please try to forgive me' but he leaves it at that. All the way home, his phone rests in his hand, lifeless.

.

On the way home, his mother stops at Baskin Robbins and buys him an ice cream. They sit in the car and listen to NPR as they eat them, and it reminds Blaine of how she'd always stop for ice cream after his dressage lessons when he was young. Sometimes it meant they got home late, which his Dad didn't like. She catches his eye now and smiles at him, this time more easily and a little bit impishly, as if they're misbehaving to do this again. It's nice. Blaine smiles back and enjoys his ice cream.

.

After dinner, Blaine goes straight up to his room. He tries calling Kurt again. He still doesn't know the exact words for what he wants to say, just that he needs to say something. It goes to voicemail. The message he leaves is simple, "It's me, Kurt. I... hope you're okay even though I know you're probably not. I am so sorry. Please call me whenever you can." He doesn't say, 'I love you' or 'I miss you' or 'Please forgive me' or 'I hate the way I left things between us' or 'I hate what I did' or...

Blaine changes into his pajamas and climbs into bed. His sheets are clean, changed today. They smell fresh, of sunshine and autumn air. He's grateful for that small thing. It's not even nine o'clock, but he is done with being conscious today. He tucks his phone under his pillow.

.

He wakes up around two AM and can't get back to sleep. His mind is a theater playing a montage of personal failure. To distract himself--or to vainly seek some sign of absolution--Blaine checks his phone for new messages. But there's nothing. He types a new text to Kurt, sends it before he can censor himself. "I understand if you hate me now. It's okay if you do. You should."

Then adds, "I hope you know how sorry I am." The words look useless on his screen, but he sends them anyway. And then adds. "I love you so much."  
.

The next day, Finn is in the choir room after school, and Blaine is glad to see him. It brings back a small portion of last year when the choir room had begun to feel like family. Blaine tries to talk to him, because Finn doesn't seem to hate him. Just asks him questions Blaine isn't sure how to answer. Then everyone else comes in and there's no point trying to answer. They're so happy to see Finn. Blaine climbs the risers and sits down in the back corner. Kurt's absence lingers.

They're going to do "Grease" for the musical this year. It's a great idea, and Blaine tries to summon some enthusiasm since Danny Zuko is a great role. 

.

If Blaine thought the silence from Kurt was suffocating him before; it's strangling him now. There are moments when he sits on the edge of the bed, his unresponsive phone clenched in his hand, feeling like his skin is about to tear open, his brain will collapse, and his heart will simply shudder to a halt. He throws the phone across the room and discovers Gorilla Glass really is that strong.

He lies back and curses himself. Wishes for a moment he could escape his own skin and his own mind. Trapped in his reality, the person he is. He doesn't want to _be_ himself. 

He tries to breathe, like Cooper taught him back when he was trying to teach Blaine yoga. One hand on his diaphragm, one hand over his heart, he closes his eyes, and remembers Cooper trying to explain to him how life is a river, from one moment to the next, it changes. Mutability is reality; permanence is the illusion. So maybe he's not the same person today that he was when he lost his faith in Kurt. Maybe he can escape his own self somehow. The version of himself that cheated is dead and gone, and he's born new in every heartbeat. He gets to choose who he is now, unbound from the past.

It'd be comforting if he believed it, but he doesn't. He can't absolve himself so easily when Kurt still hurts and can't forgive him.

.

At school and at home, Blaine goes through the motions like the talented actor he is. He's been doing variations of it for so long, there's enough muscle memory and momentum to carry him through dragging himself out of bed, showering, doing his hair, putting on an outfit—many of which are repeats, for he cannot summon the interest or energy to put together anything _new_. It's not like Kurt-- 

(Stop. Take a breath.)

It's not like there's anyone at school he's dressing for, and some of the familiar combinations remind him of better days.

So Blaine goes to his classes; he smiles at the people at whom he is meant to smile. Sits next to the people next to whom he is meant to sit. He makes small talk, offers sympathy for others' troubles, and he doesn't flinch when Brittany calls him Blaine Warbler. He answers his teachers' questions correctly when he is called upon. Does a problem from his Calculus homework on the board, gets praised for his neat and thorough work, and doesn't really care today. 

Sitting in his car after class, he calls Kurt and leaves voicemail: "Hi, Kurt. I just wanted to tell you, I love you. I guess you're not ready to talk yet? Um. That's okay. I... I mean. I wish we could talk. There're some things I need you to know. But we can talk about anything. I just miss you. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I hope you know that."

No reply comes.

When he gets home from school, on the kitchen table, at his place, is sitting a familiar parcel. He mailed it last week. The addressee is covered with a taped on piece of paper, upon which Blaine recognizes Kurt's handwriting in large, black block letters: RETURN TO SENDER. It's their Gilmore Girls DVD set he sent to Kurt as proof of his apology. They'd bought them together at the Borders in the Mall, gone halves on them, so the DVD's belonged to them, to their relationship. He thought sending them would be a gesture to show Kurt they're still connected.

Kurt didn't want them.  
.

He misses Kurt more than ever. He picks at his lunch with Brittany, who talks about how she misses Santana, but it's completely different for him, and he doesn't know how to explain that to her, so he doesn't try. Most of his food ends up in the garbage.

.

Finn and Artie want him to play Danny Zuko. Blaine knows he should, and the role is his if he wants it. But how can he? Sam tells him everyone's been through this, so Blaine sucks it up and he tries. He auditions; it's expected. He chooses to sing a Sandy song, dedicates it in his heart to Kurt. But he shouldn't be on that stage. Everything feels like a lie. He can't be Danny Zuko. He disappoints his friends, but it seems the smaller hurt. He offers to play Teen Angel instead, and hopes that will be enough. 

.

Miss Pillsbury stops him in the hall one afternoon. Invites him to come talk to her any time he wants. She hands him a pamphlet and smiles at him with her wide doleful eyes. He expects it to be either the 'So You're a Two-timing Ho?' one or the 'So You Look Like Crap?' one, but it's neither. It's titled 'I'm Too Depressed to Even Open This Pamphlet'. Blaine laughs humorlessly, but he takes the pamphlet. He doesn't, in the finish, open it.

.

Blaine texts Kurt every day: morning and noon. He calls every night before he goes to bed. Days pass and he doesn't get a reply. Finn tells him Kurt says he's busy with work, still planning to reapply to NYADA. That's all Finn will tell him.

At home he goes to the basement and punches the heavy bag until his arms and hands rage in agony, and he's exhausted. But he still can't sleep. The next day he has to use his shoulder to push the doors open at school. No one notices. He doesn't feel better, but at least it's a pain that he's used to.

.

He continues to text Kurt, to say good morning and wish him a good day, to tell him he's thinking of him and missing him; and again in the evening to say good night and that he hopes Kurt's had a good day, that his work is going well, and Blaine misses talking to him, but he won't call again until Kurt asks him to. Sometimes he reminds Kurt that he is still sorry, asks for a forgiveness he probably doesn't deserve, but for Kurt, he will wait forever if he needs to. 

The last thing Blaine does every night is send Kurt an "I love you." Because he does. There are few things in his life Blaine is certain of, but that one is clear and true in a way he wishes it had been on the day he broke everything. But it wasn't, and he screwed up. Perhaps it was inevitable. Sometimes Blaine wishes he had never turned around that day on the stairs (but then he chokes at the thought of not having had Kurt in his life at all), or that he had never confessed his feelings to Kurt in the common room. They'd still be friends, and that would be better than what they are now, which increasingly looks like nothing at all.

Nights are the worst. Any time he's alone has the potential to be bad, but there's something about the small hours when he can't sleep. Some nights he feels empty. Those are the nights he cries, feeling the doom of his life settling around him, that this is all there is, this hollow ache, this isolation, that he will remain like this forever. He'll never be able to fix things with Kurt and no one else will ever love him the way Kurt did and Kurt will never love him that way again.

Other nights, it's more of an itch, an ache, a desperation to fill that void in any way he can. The suffocating need of it fills him, leaves him with that feeling that his body will come apart if he doesn't find some satisfaction, something to ease the terrible desire for something, anything, anyone... Just someone to want him, to look at him and see him, to smile at him, to touch him with kindness. To help him breathe. But he knows that _anyone_ won't work.

He jerks off, it's all he can think to do. It eases the ache while he's doing it, so sometimes he tries to draw it out. Sometimes he looks at porn. He tries not to think too much about Kurt. Because when he does--thoughtlessly, like his libido's imagination has its own habits and momentum--it turns so quickly from fantasy to memory, and then he can't breathe at all and has to stop. 

He tries even harder to not think about Eli. But his mind betrays him and sometimes he does think of Eli--remembers Eli--and that makes him sink into self-loathing and nauseating helpless anger. So sometimes he creeps silently downstairs, down to the basement to the heavy bag so he can unload it. Either way, afterward, no matter how good the orgasm, or how hard he punches, it's never better for long; he's just more tired, more sore. Sometimes he just feels dirty and wrong, like there's something horribly malfunctioning within him, but at least, for a little while, he feels something to override the fear and despair.

.

It's past noon on a Saturday when his mother comes into his room with a large mug of coffee. She sits at the foot of his bed, straight and nervous, wakes him gently and asks him if he's all right. She's beginning to worry about him. He tells her he just misses Kurt and school is taking a lot of energy; he's working on the musical and his college applications. He has clubs and student council. AP History is tedious and has a lot of reading, He's writing a paper for that and his English creative writing assignment. He's got a Calculus test on Tuesday. And, of course, Sectionals are coming up, that sort of thing. It's just a lot of things all at once.

It's all true enough, if he's content to elide much of the detail. He tells her it's nothing to worry about. He smiles. She smiles back, relieved, and accepts his explanation. She stands and heads to the door.

"Wait. Mom?" he calls out to her, abruptly. A confession crowds up on his tongue: _I hurt Kurt really badly. I did something so stupid and so wrong and I can't undo it, and now he won't talk to me. I think we've broken up, but I don't know for sure. I miss him, and he won't talk to me. He's my best friend and we were supposed to grow old together. We were already planning our wedding and our retirement. And now he's gone and I don't know what to do. I'm scared he hates me. I'm scared that I've lost him forever. I don't know what to do._

"Yes?" she asks, expectant and concerned—and maybe little bit afraid of what he might say.

So he swallows it all down, smiles and says, "Thank you for the coffee."


	19. With My Thread and Needle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set within episode 4x08 "Thanksgiving". After seeing Blaine in Lima, Kurt tries to move on. For klaineadvent 2013 prompt #19 Stitch.
> 
> Title from the nursery rhyme "Who Killed Cock Robin?" 
> 
> _Who'll make the shroud?_  
>  _I, said the Beetle,_  
>  _With my thread and needle,_  
>  _I'll make the shroud._

It's done: step one of Kurt Hummel's Plan To Get Over Blaine Once And For All. He sent the text. Kurt sighs the tension from his shoulders and sets his phone facedown on his bed. It's done. He hopes so anyway. Blaine may respond to his text despite Kurt's request.

He's thought about turning his phone off entirely, to avoid hearing any notifications that may indicate a reply. It could only be some vain protestation or yet another pointless apology. Kurt knows there's nothing Blaine can say to change his mind. He just wants Blaine to stop. So if Blaine replies with another text or phone call, Kurt wants to know so he can respond swiftly and with resolution, repeat his previous message. He'll repeat it until Blaine hears it: _"Please stop calling me to say you're sorry. What's done is done, and so are we."_ Maybe it's harsh, but Kurt needs to be clear and firm, for his own sake, if not Blaine's. Closure will benefit them both. A clear and tidy end. No more grief for a future that no longer exists. No looking back. Time to move on. 

His phone doesn't ring or vibrate or ding. It lies quietly inert upon the bedspread. Kurt moves on to step two: lining a memento box in quilted white satin. The glossy paper covering the box is a mistletoe print, which was the least overtly Christmassy of the printed boxes available on early holiday sale at the craft shop. Technically it's an ornament box, but Kurt's removed the dividers. Carefully he measures (twice) and cuts (once) sections of heavy card to fit the bottom and four interior sides of the box. Then he cuts five rectangles of quilted satin polyester with his sharpest sewing shears, leaving a good inch and a half of overhang to fold around the card. The crisp snick and slide of the blades cleaving the material satisfies his hands' urge for destruction. 

He could have easily taken a pair of scissors to the photos containing Blaine, could've cut his face out of every memory, and then chopped the little cut-outs of Blaine into confetti. Sprinkled them into the river like ashes—

Except then, fish might eat them, and Kurt doubts that a snack of finely diced photographs of Blaine would be good for the health of the fish in the East River. And anyway, he's not so foolish as to do something quite so irreversible. As sure as he is now, maybe with time and distance—like when he's thirty and married to someone else—he'll want to reminisce about his High School years. Blaine's been an indelible part of that. He might regret having albums of photographs full of holes. Many are good memories, but in the present, Kurt can't hold onto their fondness and move on successfully. Their past happiness is in danger of becoming a shackle on his heart.

So, Kurt's goal is not to destroy the mementos of Blaine—it's not as though destroying a photograph erases Blaine from his mind anyway. Though he did spend some time debating with himself the merits of—ultimately—burning everything. Some people say that helps. He could make a proper funeral of it, build a little pyre in the fireplace, burn it all. But, no. Enough irreversible endings come in life without his consent or control, he won't choose one here.

He shall simply contain memories of Blaine, all in one place, this box, and put them to rest somewhere not readily accessible. Under his bed where he can't easily reach. Or in their basement storage locker. Or he could seal the box in a plastic bag and bury it at home when he heads back for Christmas.

(And he suppresses the pang of sadness that he's not going home for Thanksgiving.)

He takes the squares of material to his desk and adjusts the light so he can see clearly what he's doing. With waxed red thread he threads his needle, and runs, by hand, a tidy overcast stitch along the edges of the white quilted rectangles. Even though they'll be folded and glued to the cardboard, he doesn't want the fabric unraveling. His sewing machine would be quicker, but his hands are still restless, and he can use the practice. The rhythm of each stitch as he spaces them out, loops and pierces, tugs and pulls, satisfies a different urge of his hands, for precision and attention. 

Once he's got all five pieces ready, he neatly affixes the satin to the cardboard with his hot glue gun, and then fits each piece into its place to line the box. He checks that the lid still fits—it does. Good. He sits back and sighs. Readies himself for the next part. Considers waiting until tomorrow, but if he waits, he may lose his momentum—or his nerve. 

So he pulls out his photo albums and goes through, page by page, removing photos of Blaine, or of the two of them. He hesitates over group photographs. Deciding case-by-case would be best, but he doesn't want to engage with the individual moments too much, because then he may stall himself. Or cry. Tonight, he's not crying; he's done enough of that. He makes an arbitrary rule: five or more people in the photo stay in the album. Fewer than five go in the box.

He takes photographs out of their frames to put in the box. Adds, too, the red ring box with the gum wrapper ring, the vintage pocket watch Blaine gave him for Valentine's day. He considers getting the monogrammed towels from graduation, but there's no room for them. Nevertheless, birthday cards and notes passed at school—ones from both Dalton and McKinley—go in. Receipts from the Lima Bean and Breadstix. Ticket stubs from _Rent_. An unused invitation to the White House Easter Egg Roll. A gingerbread cookie recipe in Blaine's handwriting. A blue satin sleepmask. Two dried carnation boutonnieres, a handful of rose petals, and a pressed lilac blossom. An old summer scarf with green and purple butterflies. Birthday cards. Cards Blaine gave him for no reason other than to say, I love you. A second, newer, summer scarf of bright red poppies. A pair of password protected USB memory sticks of more intimate photos, never printed, never shared. Everything he can find that carries too much memory of Blaine goes in the box. Kurt doesn't cry; he doesn't feel much of anything.

The box is brimming when Kurt's finished scouring his room for mementos of Blaine. The lid won't lay flat, and Kurt's reluctant to press down too hard lest he crumple the fragile items in the box. Maybe he has some ribbon or cord he can use to tie the lid to keep it from slipping off. Or he could tape it. That's more permanent and will stop him from idly opening the box in weak moments of premature nostalgia.

Rachel had bought a pack of masking tape back when they were painting the loft. Most of it should still be somewhere. He exits his bedroom and rummages through the baskets and boxes on the utility shelves between their rooms. Finds the tape and goes back to his room.

He neatly tapes up the box and slides it under his bed. Done and done. Then, in the middle of his bed, Kurt sits, straight backed and cross-legged. He exhales. Inhales. Exhales. Tries to let his mind find a new equilibrium now that he's done what he can to clear out the relics of being with Blaine from his heart. Put it all to rest.

_What now?_ he asks himself. Quietly he sits and waits, as if the universe will send him an epiphany. Which is ridiculous. Mostly he just realizes he needs to get ready for work.

.

Late that night, Kurt's not sleeping still, and he's not taking an Ambien. Instead he's working on another project, to soothe his restless insomnia and distract himself from the dread filled ruminations of two AM.

Altering a waistcoat consumes his concentration. It's an old favorite, a classic Hartwist striped tweed in a warm palette of sepia browns and coppery oranges. The fit on him has become poor; it's too baggy around the waist and it's been pulling across his upper back. The top of the center seam is in danger of tearing, and so Kurt is carefully picking the threads apart with his seam ripper and plucking the broken threads free of the fabric. Unfortunately, they've left holes in the fabric, and so he'll need to replace both back panels. 

_"You and your ex have a rapprochement?"_ Isabelle had asked him tonight.

With a frown, Kurt returns his attention to the work of his hands. He's got some brown bemburg rayon in the trunk under his bed he may be able to use. When the two back panels come free of the front tweed and each other, Kurt sets them down on his desk and goes to kneel beside his bed. Reaching under for the trunk of sewing notions and fabric, he spies the mistletoe box and hesitates.

_"I'm closing the book on that sad saga. I'm just, I'm done. I'm done thinking about it, thinking if we're going to get back together. Wondering if we should get back together. No. It's over,"_ he had said.

Kurt swallows and blinks and drags the trunk out, rummages for the brown rayon, finds it, and stands. He sets it on the desk beside the tweed. Under the light, it's not the right tone to match the plaid—it's too sallow. He'll need something with warmer tones. Which he doesn't have on hand, so he may need to go for a bolder contrast. He has some navy blue satin with a tonal diamond print; something different could rejuvenate the garment entirely.

_"In my experience, it's always easier for me to move on if I've either had my apology accepted or, in your case, accepted an apology,"_ Isabelle said.

He slides the trunk out again, replaces the brown rayon and finds the blue satin. He looks at the mistletoe print box again. It's a casket of good memories; he wants to move on from this pain. An odd juxtaposition. Kurt sits back on his heels and his heart thuds in his chest, like it wants his attention.

_"Sometimes it's the not forgiving that holds us back."_

The trouble is, he doesn't know how to forgive Blaine. He misses him of course; that's the grief of it all. But Blaine's not dead and neither is he. Is it possible for him to accept an apology without forgiving Blaine? Can it work that way? Could he say to Blaine, "I hear you and I believe you, but I haven't forgiven you."

Does he have to forgive Blaine? Is forgiveness necessary? And if so, why can't he? Does he not want to? Does he feel so self-righteous that he doesn't actually want to forgive Blaine? Doesn't think Blaine deserves it? It's true he's been thinking that, no, he doesn't want to ease Blaine's conscience over this. Maybe he has been using it as a way to punish Blaine—to let him feel some portion of the pain he's caused Kurt. But if what Isabelle says is true, then perhaps he's punishing himself just as much. After all, Blaine's pain doesn't ease his own. Even if it did, Kurt needn't be so cruel.

What would it be like if he did? Forgive. It's hard to imagine being able to let go of the resentment. Is it something he may choose?

He has to lie on his stomach to reach the mistletoe box. He drags it out from under his bed and carefully unsticks the tape. The ache in his chest is anxious, as if he doesn't know what to expect if he opens the box. So he opens it to find out.

As he takes the photographs and objects out, one by one, he looks at them the way he did on lonely days when he simply felt love and missed Blaine. He lets himself smile at the warmth of those memories without slipping into anger and regret. He misses Blaine so much. Trying to cleave all of that emotion away from his own heart—as if he can actually box it up—it's a fatal kind of injury to self-inflict. He doesn't need to regret; he could be grateful instead. Which is another choice.

He gets to the oldest of the mementos, from when they were friends. Best friends. Before Pavarotti died, before Blaine wanted to sing a duet with him. Before all of it, Blaine was his best friend.

He thinks—he's not sure, the idea is too new, a tiny nova bloom of insight. He thinks he does want to forgive Blaine. He still doesn't know how, but he wants his best friend back. He can at least accept an apology. That's a place to start, and tomorrow is Thanksgiving.


End file.
